When We Danced
by Kitty Gets Loose
Summary: At the Home Office charity ball, an earl with an agenda pressures Mycroft and Sherlock into a dance – anything for charity, right? Moving together as they haven't done in two decades, however, reveals more than just a few things to Sherlock about Mycroft. And how well their lifelong dance with each other will end depends on the next steps they take.
1. Act One

**Act One**

Sherlock glared at Lestrade across the fancy table weighed down with chunky silverware, expensive porcelain, crystal wine glasses and pretentious food from banquet chefs trying too hard to impress.

"Gavin, what ever made you think I would enjoy this event?" Sherlock asked irritably, the consequence of which was John giving him a kick under the table.

"Sherlock!" John hissed over the strains of the unidentifiable tune being played by the live band before smiling broadly at Lestrade and saying sincerely: "We're delighted to be here, Greg – thank you for inviting us as guests of the Yard."

"Hey, Freak," Sally Donovan said in a warning tone to Sherlock from beside Lestrade. "_I_ didn't want you here, but the detective inspector was kind enough to think you and Dr Watson would like a different sort of evening out. As the Home Office pretty much pressured the Yard to buy several whole tables for ten, Greg made sure two of the seats at our table went to you as you've been _such a help_ to us all year."

"Yes, he didn't have to invite you, could've just asked the doc, and people like me, who appreciate such dinners," Anderson pointed out as the constables alongside him looked on in between bites. "But as you're joined at the hip, he thought'd be nice for you both to be here."

"I'm sorry if this isn't your kind of thing," Lestrade chuckled, letting Sherlock's rudeness roll off his back like the proverbial duck. "Just liked the idea of you dressing up nicely and joining us mere mortals at a posh do. Come on, it's a nice crowd. More members of the peerage than you can shake a stick at – and even your brother's at that table way over there, up front with the important folks!"

Sherlock and John had in fact run into Mycroft at the entrance to the ballroom earlier, and the brothers had acknowledged each other's presence so coolly that no one who was not of their acquaintance would believe they'd both been evicted from the same womb a number of decades ago.

"_That_, Graham, is precisely the reason I asked you why you thought I would enjoy this," Sherlock growled. "I can assure you that any charity ball my pompous arse of a brother would deign to attend with his insufferable colleagues would not be one that I would delight in spending time at, stifled in this straitjacket of a dinner suit."

"But you look terrific in black tie!" Lestrade declared with disarming frankness. "You were born to dress up, Sherlock. Pity you don't do it more often – I feel like a tricked-out monkey in my rented tux, but you're right at home in those bespoke rags."

"You _do_ clean up _very_ nicely," Anderson noted in a way that Sherlock might have found creepy had he not made it a point never to take the man seriously.

"And the auction is utterly _juvenile_ in its concept," Sherlock went on bitingly, as if Anderson hadn't spoken. "It's bad enough that most London charity dinners hawk boring tripe like poorly executed works of art and limited-edition ugliness, but this one decides to do that _and_ add what they gauchely term a 'freestyle' segment? Leaving auction ideas to the pathetic imagination of guests such as yourselves will not produce any edifying outcome for the charities they aim to benefit."

"Oh, I don't know," Lestrade said cheerfully. "We hear the Home Secretary's going to put up a thousand quid to propose that our Deputy Commissioner of Police go on a dinner date with the highest bidder, and there's plenty of interest."

"Your Deputy Commissioner of Police is a right twat," Sherlock scoffed.

"Sherlock! Language!" John reminded him.

"Maybe so," Lestrade chuckled. "But according to Sal here and all the other ladies I've heard talking about it, he's a bloody _dishy_ twat!"

"I did _not_ call our deputy commissioner a twat," Donovan protested firmly.

"But you did say he was a dishy bastard," Lestrade said. "And single to boot."

"_You're_ single, Geoff," Sherlock snapped. "You should get yourself auctioned off to the highest bidder."

"Too old, too washed-up, too poor, and apparently not dishy enough," Lestrade sighed with a touch of faux drama before taking a large sip of his red wine and helping himself to another mouthful of pork medallion.

"Oh, God, even Loony Leonard's here," Sherlock groaned as a tall, white-haired figure wove between the tables in their direction, apparently on his way back from the loo.

"Loony… _who_?" John asked before spotting the person in question coming towards them. "Oh for God's sake, Sherlock – are you talking about _Lord Somers_? _Don't_ call him loony in public! You know he's already annoyed enough with you about the case!"

"What case?" Lestrade asked.

"Sherlock solved a missing-heirloom mystery for the earl," John explained. "He didn't want to take the case because it apparently rated only a 'three'. However, Mycroft made him do it because Lord Somers is an old friend of the family. His Grumpiness insulted everyone within earshot but still sorted everything out in an hour, then he insulted everyone again and flounced off. As he does. Leaving _me_ to collect payment and apologise. Lord Somers was thrilled with the outcome of the case, but highly displeased with Sherlock's behaviour. He wasn't happy with Mycroft either for not reining Sherlock in…"

"Loony bat," Sherlock muttered under his breath, prompting another sharp kick from John under the table.

"…so the earl made a complaint to _Mummy_," John finished.

"Oops," Anderson vocalised dryly before lifting his glass of wine. "And here he is."

"Sherlock, my _dear boy_, what a surprise! Never thought I'd run into _you_ here," Lord Somers said as he reached their table. "Good evening, Dr Watson. It's such a pleasure to meet you again."

"Good evening, Lord Somers," John said politely, rising to greet the earl. "Sherlock and I are here as guests of Detective Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard and his team."

"Oh, yes, of course, of course – Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade – I've heard so much about you and your team," the aristocrat smiled at the officer of the law.

"Too much to hope that you've heard only good things, I suppose," Lestrade said self-deprecatingly, shaking his hand as John made the introduction.

"No, no – only excellent reports, I assure you," Lord Somers said. "Mycroft Holmes has complimented your work more than once, and I'm sure you know that even the faintest praise from Holmes is the equivalent of high commendation from any other quarter."

Sherlock snorted.

"_This_ Holmes, of course, is quite different, isn't he? _Quite_ different," Lord Somers laughed. "He was the sweetest-natured child – unbelievably so – but turned into quite a handful in his teens. And his elder brother is _still_ cleaning up after him everywhere he goes!"

Sherlock started to look apoplectic and said cuttingly: "Mycroft in all his pompous obesity couldn't possibly attempt to clean up after a flipperless _turtle_…"

Which was the cue for Lord Somers to say loudly over the detective's head: "_Well_, I must be getting back to my table, or they'll think I've wandered off and lost my way in my dotage. Have a lovely evening, Dr Watson, Detective Inspector Lestrade, gentlemen, and ladies. Sherlock, do give my love to your parents."

As Lord Somers wove his way back to his table near the front of the ballroom, Sherlock muttered: "As if he didn't just speak to Mummy three days ago."

"Stop grumbling," John chided Sherlock even as Lestrade chuckled at his sulkiness. "If you're going to insult your parents' friend, you have to accept the consequences. Oh, the auction's starting…"

It was as tacky as Sherlock had feared. After the lousy pieces of art by whomever and porcelain vases donated by whatever body, and memorabilia signed by celebrities who didn't merit the name, the ridiculously-termed freestyle segment came up. In this, each auction item had two parts to it: first, a proposer would name a sum that he or she would donate to a participating charity if something of his or her choosing were carried out; next, other guests who supported the motion could use an app downloaded onto their phones to put up donation sums of their own as encouragement for the proposal to happen. If what the proposer wanted was done, all the sums put forward would go to the charity; if it was not carried out, the proposer's potential donation as well as the potential donations of the guests who supported it had the right to be withdrawn by the donors. The rules were that no proposal that was illegal, dangerous, unethical or tasteless (as judged by a panel appointed by the Home Office) would be accepted.

It was the kind of concept that would fly well at events where most of the attendees knew, or knew of, one another. This being a Home Office charity ball, a lot of the guests did in fact work with one another, or were prominent members of politics and society who supported the grassroots and community outreach schemes of various Home Office divisions. And plenty of souls here were just dying to watch the prim individuals they knew in the professional sphere do all sorts of stuff they ordinarily wouldn't be caught dead doing.

So it began.

As Lestrade had mentioned, the Home Secretary did step up with his opening nomination sum of £1,000 if the Deputy Commissioner of Police would go on a date with the donor offering the highest sum for an evening in his company. The supporting sums began to come in through the apps on phones all over the room, and the growing figures were reflected in real time on the screens around the ballroom. The man in question gamely stepped up onto the stage, and the bids kept pouring in until the pre-set time limit was up.

"So, Sir Mark," said the auctioneer-cum-emcee for the night, distractingly glittery in her silvery ballgown. "If you don't agree to go through with this, all these promised donations could be withdrawn. If you do agree, it will all be locked in to go to the charities we're here for tonight. Will you do it? Will you go on a date with whoever has offered the biggest sum in the pool of supporting donations?"

"Yes, all right – I'll do it," Sir Mark agreed with some embarrassment, and applause flooded the room as the total sum in excess of £15,000 was locked in.

It was awkward – everything was awkward and tacky – the emceeing, the tone, the phrasing, the man's stupid, red-faced embarrassment, _the whole damn idea_ – just awful. Sir Mark might be dishy, but suave and eloquent he was _not_. And the auctioneer might be pretty and perky, but she was also dreadfully trite.

"And the generous donor who's won a date with you is… oh, it's Lady Mellors!"

"_With_ my husband's permission!" the lady in question called out loudly from her table, clearly having had more than just a few glasses of wine. "It's all for a good cause, isn't it?"

Ugh. Worse and worse. Or perhaps worser and worser, if Sherlock might be permitted to mangle Lewis Carroll.

"It is indeed!" the auctioneer laughed. "Thank you very much for such a bright start to this segment of our auction! Sir Mark, Lady Mellors, thank you both, and thank you, all, for your generosity. We'll help you both make the arrangements for the date at the end of the auction. Now, next, Mr Sean Marlowe is giving us an opening sum of £800 if Dame Augusta Rice can be persuaded to sing a song of her choice, accompanied either by the live band or the deejay."

A murmur of interest rippled through the room, as Dame Augusta Rice was known to have a beautiful singing voice but to be dreadfully shy about showing it off. The supporting donations that began to pour in, however, were pushing the £10,000 mark by the end of the time limit, and Dame Augusta was evidently feeling some pressure to proceed with the song so as not to let down the charitable cause. With plenty of blushing, and after some hushed discussion with the live band, she took the stage and delivered a marvellous rendition of Saint-Saëns' _Mon Coeur S'Ouvre a Ta Voix_, which prompted additional donations of appreciation.

The performance, Sherlock thought, was tolerable and at least lifted the tone of the auction a little. But to his annoyance, the next items reverted to silliness, including a cartwheel challenge posed to the director-general of Visas and Immigration; a fruit-juggling request made to a baroness; and a raucous call for a Mr Somebody-or-Other to kiss some grandmotherly specimen who appeared to have a large crush on him.

It was after that that things got exponentially worse. For Sherlock, at least. Because weaving his way up to the microphone on stage, apparently after obtaining the organisers' permission, was Lord Loony himself. Whose very clear and simple statement of his intention to donate the staggering sum of £40,000 dropped the entire ballroom into a state of stunned silence.

Considering that one of the biggest London charity balls last year had broken a national record by raising a little over £100,000 _in total_ by the end of the evening, £40,000 tonight coming from just _one_ individual donor at this ball would almost certainly result in the final sum raised for charity outstripping that record last year. Sherlock couldn't even call the earl's bluff here, because thanks to Mycroft twisting his arm into taking the case of the missing heirloom, he happened to know better than most that Lord Somers easily had £40,000 in crisp paper pocket change to dish out, as a result of some very intelligent property investments he'd made over the course of his long life.

Still, not everyone who had such money would donate it to charity just like that. It almost impressed Sherlock. _Almost_. Because the next words out of Lord Somers' mouth were for Sherlock the equivalent of smashing every mirror between here and Wonderland, dragging him through the shards of glass in every frame, and dropping him right into a pile of fantastically bad hallucinations complete with boogieing walruses and smoking caterpillars. "I'll donate that sum if Mr Mycroft Holmes and his brother, Mr Sherlock Holmes, will do a slow dance together right here and now to a song of my choosing."

From his seat, Sherlock could just make out the figure of Mycroft, far up front at his table, reacting with a small jolt of shock and surprise before his features settled into a chilly expression that turned about as fixed and cold as stone in a graveyard on a winter night.

"I'm a family friend, so I'm taking a few liberties here," Lord Somers went on a little drunkenly. "Sherlock's prickly as hell, as I know plenty of you in this room have had personal experience of – I see lots of faces of folks who've gone to him for cases and been impolitely told off…"

Sherlock's eyes darted about the ballroom in as unnoticeable a manner as he could manage, but he didn't really have to see for himself – the grimace on John's face and the way Lestrade's hand was sliding up over his chin to cover his mouth told him that, yes, the bloody ballroom had more than just a couple of people he'd offended before.

"… but if it's any consolation, ladies and gentlemen, his own family suffers the sharp edge of his tongue far more than any of you have. _Anyway_, his parents, his late Uncle Rudy who was my dearest friend, and I, used to _love_ watching his big brother teach him how to dance when Sherlock was much, _much_ younger, and I'd pay good money to see Mycroft persuade him now. A sweet, slow number, just to help your Uncle Leonard remember good old times…"

Sherlock's expression – and Mycroft's – seemed to say nothing less than that "Uncle Leonard" could go hang himself on a nostalgic rope woven from his ancient memories. But to their horror, the supporting bids began to simply _pour_ in. Like a fucking avalanche. Curse it all, but it looked like Sherlock really had pissed off plenty of rich people here who now wanted to see him embarrassed. And Mycroft, no doubt, knew a lot of very wealthy individuals who would literally pay a fortune to watch The Iceman do something utterly incongruous with his penchant for cutting lesser mortals to shreds with his cold genius.

"I won't be rigid about the exact dance style – I know I said a slow dance, but please feel free to go with a two-step, a slow foxtrot, a rumba, whatever, as long as you're in each other's arms," Lord Somers went on gleefully.

The supporting donations kept coming in, as if it weren't only an avalanche but the mountain itself was tumbling into the ocean. To Sherlock's unease, the figure was reaching £80,000 and still climbing. He knew that even with Mycroft's level of wealth, his brother would have to think twice, thrice, about casually offering to pay that sum out of his own pocket just so the charities wouldn't suffer, but he wouldn't have to carry out the challenge.

The clincher, alas, came from Lord Somers, who added: "Come on, Mycroft – what's a little dance between two brothers for old times' sake? And I've requested that a larger proportion of the donations should go to the Narwhal Fund for the Gifted, which I happen to know is a cause close to your heart."

Curse and damn it all, but Sherlock knew that Mycroft did indeed support that fund, which identified highly intelligent and talented children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and gave them all the nurturing their families couldn't provide to fully develop the best of their abilities. Sherlock could even see Lady Smallwood, who was seated beside Mycroft, looking down into her lap with a telltale guilty posture that told him she was making a generous supporting donation of her own through the app on her phone, just to add to the pressure on him and Mycroft.

And curse Lestrade, Donovan, Anderson and… and even _John_ – the little _traitor_ – because they were patently adding to the pressure with (smaller) supporting donations of their own on their phones. Lestrade was grinning, Anderson looked eager to an unseemly degree, Donovan openly flashed her phone screen at Sherlock with a smug look, the constables were smirking, and John appeared sheepish, but they were all _not_ helping him! Miserable blackguards!

With his peripheral vision, he saw Mycroft rise from his seat. Sherlock shut his eyes fatalistically, counting the seconds his brother would require to transport his lazy self across the ballroom on two legs. He counted impeccably, for when he opened his eyes again, Mycroft was just stepping up to his table and saying to him gruffly: "Let's get it over with."

Sherlock took a deep breath, then a second deep breath, glared across the table at Lestrade again (the DI only shrugged and looked as if he was trying not to break into another huge grin), contemplated telling Mycroft to go to hell and take "Uncle" Leonard with him, immediately decided against that idea as this wasn't actually Mycroft's fault for once and hell was too good a place for Lord Loony, and then abruptly chose on the spur of the moment to bite the bullet and, as Mycroft suggested, "get it over with". If Mycroft could do it, then so could he.

Once he pushed his chair back, his body language must have told his brother that he was going along with it, because he strode towards the dance floor at once without needing to turn to check if Sherlock was following.

As incredulous applause broke out across the ballroom, Lord Somers spoke into the microphone: "I'm an old-fashioned fellow and bloody old by now too. I suppose I could've gone with a tune all the way back from my youth, but that truly would be returning to a bygone age. So I moved it forward a few decades to a couple of the eras when I last actually enjoyed listening to the music that was played on the radio. I quite liked the '80s and '90s, didn't you all? I was tempted to go with _Every Breath You Take_ by The Police, as it's just so very 'Big Brother is watching you', and we know it's quite literal in _this_ case, isn't it? Then I thought maybe _Jealousy_ by the Pet Shop Boys, as there's so very much fretting in it about some irresponsible individual who never calls when he says he will and can't be found at three in the morning – quite relatable, hmm, Mycroft? Or Erasure's _Boy_ – because I'm sure you think that all these years of love and giving haven't meant a thing to someone, am I right, Myc?"

If the killer glare on Mycroft's face was any indication of what Sherlock was certain was a matching killer glare plastered all over his own features, Lord Somers should run for his life. But the earl was a fearless old trooper, and he simply continued: "But, well, as it turns out, I'm a sentimental decrepit bugger, and I always loved Air Supply…"

_Of all the cheesy, tacky bands to pick… _Sherlock groaned inwardly even as he saw that it was Mycroft's turn to close his eyes, and that his brother didn't quite succeed in suppressing the shudder that shot through his frame.

"… and they had this nice little ballad that never seemed terribly popular on our charts, I don't know why, because _I_ loved it. So, Mycroft, Sherlock, _Goodbye_."

As Lord Somers stepped away from the microphone on the stage, Sherlock's brain scrambled to work out what that meant. Why had he said goodbye like that? What did it signify? What did it…? Oh. _Oh._ It was the damnable _song title_. What hellish manner of mawkish pop tune was this?

In the moments of silence before a single note was played by the deejay, Mycroft and Sherlock turned their glares onto each other as they swiftly engaged in a grim battle of wills, wordlessly wrestling with each other to determine who should lead. Sherlock already knew he would lose this fight, because he didn't know the song at all, whereas he had a suspicion that it wasn't entirely unfamiliar to Mycroft (though God knows why Mycroft would listen to any music that didn't hail from before the 1800s). But still, he needed to put up a fight just… just for the principle of it.

However, Mycroft could surely read in his eyes the damning fact of his not knowing the song, so the tide of the battle turned at once. Indeed, to his annoyance, his elder brother extended his left hand to him. Sherlock bristled, but there was no help for it. So he put his right hand into Mycroft's left like any properly brought-up lady would on the dance floor, and he felt Mycroft's right hand go around to his back at the same time as he placed his own left hand on Mycroft's shoulder. Immediately, everything slid easily into place like a key into a lock that had sealed up the past, and it was suddenly as if the intervening decades between their teens and this day had never come and gone.

In Sherlock's teenage years, Mycroft had patiently practised every ballroom and social dance under the sun with him, at their mother's insistence.

"If Sherlock grows up without the foggiest idea of how to lead a lady on the dance floor, I'll have failed as a parent," Mummy had sighed.

"I'm not certain that hasn't already happened," Mycroft had said acerbically.

"Myc!"

"Why don't _you_ teach him, if it's so important to you?" Mycroft had asked.

"He never listens to me!"

"Do you imagine that he listens to _me_?"

"He does! He pretends not to, but he does, Myc!"

That was how they'd begun.

It never turned out to be as bad as either he or Mycroft had feared the lessons would be. They both had a very good ear for music and tempo, and even when Sherlock was only 12 and Mycroft was almost 19, they'd shared an excellent sense of how to move and position their bodies, especially in relation to each other. Despite Sherlock's constant insults on the themes of Mycroft's physical laziness, loathing of legwork, and the chubby phase his elder brother had suffered through in puberty, Mycroft was a good dancer and brilliant teacher. He had known how to convey corrections and pointers to Sherlock in ways that would be immediately grasped by him.

Mostly, he had let Sherlock lead, as he needed to learn how to do so if and when he had to dance in public with a girl. But Mycroft insisted on leading sometimes, so that Sherlock would understand the importance of being a good partner.

"What is the earthly _use_ of me learning to _follow_?" Sherlock had asked snippily one day, with all the acidity of his 12 years of life.

Without dropping a step as he'd spun Sherlock in lively circles round the emptier half of the drawing room to Shostakovich's _Second Waltz_, Mycroft had said calmly: "You will know at first hand what it is like to be led well – what a big difference it can make to your partner to be led confidently by someone who accommodates her needs – and how it feels to be allowed to move freely in time with the music instead of having to anticipate it."

"Anticipate it?"

"If you are leading a partner who is unfamiliar with your dance moves, or who needs to rely heavily on your cues for the dance, then if you only shift yourself precisely to the beat of the music, by the time she moves to follow, she will always feel she's a fraction of a beat too late. If you anticipate that and move yourself a fraction of a beat early, you will be able to lead her to move precisely _to_ the beat. It will make a difference to her enjoyment of the dance."

"So all this time when you were following my lead…"

"You were dragging me behind the beat as if I were a broomstick."

"And now you're…"

"Leading _you_ to move_ to_ the beat."

Sherlock had chewed on that for a second, then he'd peremptorily ordered: "Switch. _Now_."

Mycroft had smirked at him, but they'd shifted their hands and arms as swiftly and smoothly as if they'd choreographed it, and Sherlock had led his brother _impeccably_ through the rest of the dance. Although their relationship was already a difficult one by then, he had felt the tiniest bloom of pride when Mycroft had smiled approvingly at the end of the waltz and dropped a mock curtsey to him that wasn't at all mocking, but rather, good-humoured.

Now, as they faced each other in the ballroom of this grand hotel, the tinkling keyboard notes of the ballad intro began to play, and Sherlock let Mycroft lead him – perfectly, as he knew he would – through steps that only he would know how to follow just as flawlessly. Because when they'd danced together as teenagers, Mycroft had not only coached him in all the conventional techniques of the traditional ballroom dances, but had kept him engaged and entertained by merging, mixing and blending – in his uniquely playful, inventive and artistic way – a variety of moves and steps from different dances. It had been fun. Thrilling, even, when he found he could anticipate how Mycroft would improvise, and respond in just the right way.

Those made-up moves, Mummy had said proudly, had looked almost like performance dances. "Beautiful, just beautiful – I wish I you'd let me film you!" she'd cried.

"Don't you dare, Mummy," Mycroft had warned her sternly as he'd glided Sherlock smoothly backwards to the dramatic beat of Prokofiev's _Montagues and Capulets_. "We'd never live it down. I'm going to rule the world, remember? How would a shadowy king-maker reconcile his sinister image with a video of his teenage self spinning his little brother around? And Sherlock's going to be a pirate. He doesn't need footage of him twirling about to mar his vicious reputation. Film us and you'll ruin us. Please don't insult our genius or your own genes by even _thinking_ that we won't just magically_ know_ if you try to do it in secret."

It was one of the very rare occasions on which Sherlock had laughed out loud in non-cynical fashion since he'd been a small child, and he and Mycroft had shared a snort and a chuckle at Mummy's expense.

Sherlock hauled himself back to the present, registering the evocative opening notes and knowing at once upon hearing them (as if the title of _Goodbye_ wasn't enough of a clue) that this was not a happy song. He glanced to his right and locked eyes with Mycroft as the first line that was sung, uncannily, spoke of seeing pain in the other's eyes.

Was there pain in Mycroft's eyes? There was, wasn't there? Why? How long had it been there? Did he see pain in Sherlock's eyes too? He spared a bit of brain space to wonder why the outrageous earl had chosen such a sad song for them to dance to. Pretty melody, emotive arrangement, but so bittersweet, its lyrics mingling empathy and appreciation with an awareness of the other's suffering and the impossibility of continuing the relationship in question.

Mycroft moved them in a slow foxtrot through the first verse, his right hand lower on Sherlock's back than traditional form would normally allow, keeping their bodies close so they could feel the tiniest shifts in each other's frames as he steadily guided him through the unfamiliar music.

For years, they'd been all but estranged, and Mycroft's body in its fourth decade of life ought to have become something remote from Sherlock's knowledge, like a stranger's. But as he trusted himself now to Mycroft on the dance floor, it dawned on him that he still knew his brother's patterns and rhythms so well, it was as if they'd never stopped dancing together. He barely needed to put much effort into reading his moves – he _knew_ Mycroft's breathing, what the infinitesimal turn of his head to his left meant, what the tiny shift and press of fingers against his back signified, what the dip of the right half of his ribcage preceded, where his feet would be, every second.

All of it – every step, every touch – was done to bring Sherlock through this trial by dance, to keep him moving beautifully, to make him look the best he could. Every detail was as known and reassuring to Sherlock as if this were a rhythmic metaphor for everything Mycroft had done for him all these years – everything he _still_ did for him, all the time, without ever being thanked for it.

This was all Sherlock's fault, wasn't it? He was the one who'd been rude to Lord Somers, not Mycroft. He was the one who'd insulted enough people in the ballroom for this to be a curious sight they'd gleefully wanted to see, not Mycroft. Maybe some people were also pleased to watch The Iceman melt a bit into the semblance of something slightly more human, but no one here would have dared target Mycroft to begin with if he hadn't been dragged in as collateral damage in Lord Somers' petty revenge against Sherlock.

But Mycroft didn't want Sherlock humiliated. He didn't want him lost and embarrassed and stomping out of the ballroom like a toddler throwing a tantrum. He wanted to steer Sherlock through this, for both of them to acquit themselves more than creditably, and he was doing it immaculately. Even in the turmoil of Sherlock's uneasy, incipient guilt, he could sense that the mood in the ballroom had changed from gloating amusement to grudging admiration.

Of course it had. Because Mycroft moved beautifully. Only now did Sherlock truly remember just _how_ beautifully his brother could dance. Mycroft might stalk about as if he had a broomstick up his arse when he walked stiffly among the diplomatic set, and his work posture and behaviour might be irritatingly rigid, but Sherlock remembered how fluidly he could move, and how fluidly he could help _Sherlock_ to move.

Like the time Sherlock was 14 and Mummy and Daddy had thrown one of their silly parties. Those were the days when they'd entertained often enough to maintain the event hall at home in a state fit for its original purpose. They'd invited extended family, friends and neighbours from the village, and it had featured a ridiculous amount of line dancing (one of their parents' execrable obsessions). But they'd slipped in other dances as well in the course of the gathering, and the brothers – who had steadfastly rejected all involvement with the line dancing – had been obliged to participate.

Mycroft was dragged into a waltz with one of their great-aunts. Two dances later, Sherlock was forced to partner the same woman in the quickstep, and she'd gripped his shoulder with her alarmingly strong talons as hard as she'd clung to Mycroft. Sherlock had thought he could bear up like his brother had under the claws she'd dug into his flesh and cartilage through the shirt. But compared with Mycroft, Sherlock at 14 was much more sensitive, squirmier, and less tolerant – not to mention that as an adolescent, he was in possession of less muscle and bulk than his adult brother. He'd flinched and balked, and his footwork had stuttered so much that Great-aunt Patricia had criticised him loudly for being a poor dancer. He'd said nothing – he'd only been glad that the dance was at an end – but the next thing he knew, when the music for the next song started up, Mycroft had taken his hand and drawn him smoothly into an unutterably gorgeous foxtrot to the strains of _Fly Me to the Moon_, holding him as he'd always held him, with just the right firmness, without clutching or gripping or uncomfortable tension, leading him so as to best show off the skill and precision of Sherlock's footwork and the slender lines of his body.

Everyone at the gathering had watched, mesmerised by the beauty of their moves. At the end of the dance, after a beat of complete silence that spoke much more loudly than words, all the guests (except Great-aunt Patricia) had broken into heartfelt applause, Uncle Rudy had feigned a swoon before fanning himself vigorously, Daddy had beamed and bowed to them from where he stood, and Mummy had embarrassingly cried tears of pride. Sherlock, in all his preternatural perceptiveness, had detected nothing but genuine admiration from everyone present (except Great-aunt Patricia, whose admiration was heavily begrudging, but admiration nonetheless).

"Sherlock is a wonderful dancer," Mycroft had later said to a small cluster of family friends, clearly and pointedly enough for Great-aunt Patricia to hear. "He has a natural talent for it, and it is most evident when he has the _right partner_."

Great-aunt Patricia had been in the grave for a decade now, ghastly woman (Sherlock had never put stock in the idea that one shouldn't speak ill of the dead – if they were horrid, they were horrid, dead or alive). But in her stead, another roomful of spectators had to eat their smugness born of the mistaken belief that the arrogant Holmes brothers would make spectacular fools of themselves on the dance floor. They looked on, rapt, as he and Mycroft moved as one. When the song shifted into what sounded to Sherlock like a build-up to an approaching chorus, Mycroft segued him into an adapted two-step, swinging him out a little, drawing him back in, easing him out again, their linked hands the only points of contact between them.

_"I don't want to let you down, I don't want to lead you on, I don't want to hold you back from where you might belong…"_, the lead-up to the chorus went, every word branding itself on Sherlock's mind as he began to understand in ways he never objectively had that Mycroft had _never_ let him down, led him on or held him back. But why did his brother look so sad now as they danced, as if he was communicating to him even as they moved like a unified entity, that it was time to let him go?

A surge of resistance to this idea rose up in Sherlock. When the chorus itself came on, and Mycroft slipped them seamlessly with another easy shift of arms and positioning into one of the tango-rumba-hybrid variant sequences they'd practiced as teenagers, Sherlock wrapped his arms around him in all honesty – it was no pretence for the sake of the dance. A part of Sherlock's mind that he'd set aside for objectivity noted with curiosity as it processed his actions – from outside of himself, as it were – that his embrace seemed to be saying: _"Mycroft, don't go… don't let me go…"_

Mycroft had deemed the tango too salacious for an adolescent Sherlock to learn in full, but he'd taken him through the basics of the dance and shown him how adaptable and impromptu its moves could be. They'd developed a variation with rumba that featured very close dancing, but downplayed the roaming hands, sharp leg-hooking and erotic gazes, and twisting hips. Occasionally, they'd used those moves entirely sans _gancho_ and high kicks for use with melodic, non-sultry, non-tango music with a 2/4 or 4/4 time signature. It wasn't really tango or rumba any more by then, more like _theatre_, Sherlock had snorted.

But it was why they could bring in those unconventional moves now with this pop ballad, letting them hold each other close, with feeling, Mycroft moving around to Sherlock's back at one point, almost nuzzling his neck. Without their employing any of the obvious tango or rumba features that would be familiar to the audience, it looked instead like gliding, classic, uniquely choreographed Western ballroom with an emotional twist to it.

Sherlock felt safe in Mycroft's hands, in Mycroft's arms – something he hadn't actually thought about for an age – and he knew that this security extended well beyond the dance. He always felt safe in Mycroft's hands. As much as he'd purported to despise his brother's interference, he had never experienced greater depth of relief with anyone than he had whenever Mycroft had swooped in to rescue him. Each time his brother had retrieved him from a drug den, extracted him from trouble on a dangerous mission, steered his unconventional career path, vetted his allies, buffered him from their parents' most annoying traits, literally kept him fed and clothed during the leanest years of his adult life, and personally stood between Sherlock and death, he had pretended to be displeased about it, but he hadn't been able to deny the sense of having been delivered from damnation. Every single time. No one else had done that for him with such intensity and devotion.

They were seguing again into the slow foxtrot as the second verse played with an emotive shift of key, and to Sherlock's surprise, their bodies barely felt close enough now for his liking. This was comparatively so distant, so formal, and sad, a miniature letting-go to echo the lyrics of loss and parting.

There was a deeper echo, too, of how they'd danced their last dance together when Sherlock was 15, and Mycroft was 22 and about to start his career.

"I think I've taught you everything you need to know to partner someone on the dance floor, and practised sufficiently with you to raise your skill level so it would be enviable even to other good dancers," Mycroft had remarked one afternoon as he'd coached Sherlock on the finer points of the rumba.

His bags were packed, his first real work suits were in garment bags hanging from the coat rack, and he was moving out of their parents' house for the last time.

Sherlock had shrugged and affected indifference – which he realised now had caused Mycroft to look a little sadder than he'd liked him to look. But he was angry with himself for feeling bereft too, because there'd been something about their dance practices that was like nothing else in his life. And deep inside, he was angry that Mycroft had suggested ending it, because Mycroft _had _to know, didn't he, that Sherlock wouldn't ask him to continue once he said they should stop? At the same time, he didn't want to need Mycroft, so he was buffeted by his inner conflict.

He'd felt even more agitated (though he never let it show) when Mycroft had said softly, with a touch of playfulness: "One last dance for the road?"

Sherlock had huffed scornfully and muttered: "Don't be absurd."

"Not even a slow dance?" Mycroft had asked teasingly – it had to be a joke; _that _had certainly never been in their repertoire of lessons – but there'd been that hint of sadness again that Sherlock had _hated_ to see, and it had made him feel even more as if bees were attacking his insides.

"Just go and rule the world, Mycroft," he'd said, turning to go instead of slipping into his brother's arms as perhaps he should have – and that had been it. The dance lessons were at an end, and they'd never physically moved together like that again for the pure recreational love of it.

Instead, their dances had shifted entirely into the intellectual and adversarial realm, like a vicious, long-running paso doble in which each appeared to target the other with everything unkind, stopping short only of actually murdering each other. The build-up had been a long time coming. Because even as they'd civilly communicated under their parents' roof and gone through their dance lessons from the time Sherlock was 11 to when he was 15, Sherlock had been increasingly disapproving of Mycroft's growing political sharpness and shadowy diplomacy in _everything_, while Mycroft too had disapproved of Sherlock's unsubtle, rebellious refusal to make the most of his considerable range of talents in ways that would actually be useful in society.

Dancing had been the last bastion of their cooperation in those final years of childhood, but it had become pretty grim after that, all through Sherlock's drug-dependent and anti-social phase. Until he'd finally grown up, grown savvier about how to use his favoured substances safely, and become more street-smart about how to use people without their realising they were being used. He and Mycroft had then been able to cooperate on the job relatively successfully, but they'd never again had that ease and openness they'd given each other in dance.

Till now.

Mycroft was this moment leading them into the moves for the second pre-chorus. Instead of taking it with the nightclub two-step as they had the first time round, he slid them back into their demi-tango-theatre, burning Sherlock's soul with the heat of his hands on his hips and the intensity of his gaze for the three too-brief lines of lyrics before he switched things up again and, purely through the shift in positioning of his hands and stance, told Sherlock they would slow-foxtrot their way through the second chorus.

Their communication was perfect. They'd spent years, of course, in a sort of cold war of one-upmanship as each had escalated his ability to read the other while refining his skill at hiding his real thoughts. It had been a Holmes nuclear arms race of observation, induction, concealment, deception and outright sniping. As soon as one worked out how to conceal his tells from his sibling, the other would crack the new code, then their positions would switch and the race would resume. But it astounded Sherlock now to comprehend for the first time in his life that everything this archenemy of his had done on his side of the war was, in truth, for the purpose of keeping Sherlock safe and alive. And now, they were face to face, speaking no words but saying everything openly, unafraid to be read and understood – _needing_ to be decoded and understood.

Mycroft's touch, his hold, the firmness and gentleness of his embrace took over Sherlock's entire being as he realised yet another fact he'd never allowed to sink into his head before: No one had ever touched him like Mycroft had. His brother's hands had never harmed him, never struck him, never been cruel to him. He'd _hurt_ him sometimes, of course, out of necessity – there was no way to clean wounds without causing pain, no way to pop a shoulder back into its socket without agony, no way to pinch and slap him to keep him awake so he wouldn't fade out and die without inflicting some hurt – but those hands had always helped him, always reached out to him, always protected him.

No one had ever handled him like Mycroft had. Like Mycroft did. Like Mycroft was doing now. His touch wasn't fatherly or fraternal in the way Lestrade's hugs or pats on the shoulder were; it wasn't the taken-for-granted proprietorial touches from Mummy and Daddy; it wasn't the awkward best-friendliness, frustration-triggered aggression or medical concern of the physical contact John offered; it wasn't Molly's hopeless hopefulness and occasional angry slaps; or Mrs Hudson's more-maternal-than-Mummy's everyday interactions with him.

It was uniquely Mycroft. Confident when it was necessary, a little cautious when it was not, very reserved, firm when needed, barely there when he thought it might not be welcome, always warm even when the words were harsh, withheld entirely when the words bordered on sentiment because it would be much too much, and – Sherlock truly understood now – always, always imparting love.

Sherlock felt his psyche scalded by the shame of remembering how he'd so brutally caused physical – and emotional – hurt to Mycroft the time he'd attacked him when they'd disagreed over how to deal with Charles Augustus Magnussen while Sherlock had been high as a kite. Short of a life-and-death situation in which he might have to manhandle Sherlock undercover, or in order to drag him back from the brink of destruction, Mycroft would never have done something like that to him no matter how Sherlock provoked him.

_"I would rather hurt myself / Than to ever make you cry…"_

Sherlock leaned into Mycroft as they went through their slow foxtrot, giving him his warmth while drawing support from him, and Mycroft flashed him a look of mild surprise at the slight alteration in his posture. Sherlock gazed back a little worriedly, not sure if he was overstepping the boundaries he himself had chalked on the ground between them. But the song was entering an instrumental interlude now, and Mycroft slid his hands down to Sherlock's waist and hips, then they were doing the slow dance Mycroft had asked him for when they were 15 and 22, which he'd turned down.

A last dance. A slow dance goodbye, coming years after it was requested. It would be poor form in a ballroom – even in a portion featuring something as unsophisticated as a slow dance – for him to bury his face in his brother's neck, but he came close. His lips brushed Mycroft's skin above the collar of his dinner jacket even as he felt the hitch and release of Mycroft's warm breath against his right ear.

Only now did Sherlock understand that the cold war of concealment and codes had actually started long before they'd stopped dancing – that the sadness he sometimes saw in Mycroft's eyes as they'd turned circles with and around each other in their parents' house had simply been a code Mycroft hadn't been sophisticated enough to completely hide then, one that Sherlock had been too inexperienced to crack at all.

_I love you,_ the code had said. _I love you, I love you, and I can never tell you._

He understood that Mycroft hadn't wanted to stop dancing with him, but had had to, because it was hard to keep hiding how you felt about someone when you were in each other's arms.

Sherlock melted into the circle of Mycroft's arms around his waist in the slow dance that had been such a long time coming, but the instrumental interlude was ending, as he could tell from the glide of his brother's fingers over his hips, up his sides and down his arms, then they segued into the slow foxtrot again for the final repetition of the chorus. Again, he felt too far apart from Mycroft. Again, it was a small parting he didn't want. The lovers of the song were saying goodbye, and Sherlock had just discovered that the alienated figure who had always seemed to dominate his whole existence might just have regarded Sherlock as the great love of his life.

The song wound down with its tinkling keyboard notes again, and their dance ended. Mycroft looked at Sherlock, then he looked away, and it was surprisingly hard for Sherlock to read him right now. He couldn't be obvious about trying to do so either – not in front of everyone. They stepped apart, didn't bother with a bow to the audience who were erupting in applause along with the auctioneer's gushing cries, but only nodded stiffly to acknowledge the crowd getting to its feet to hail their performance, and cast a quick glance at Lord Somers who was still on the stage, looking at them and clapping slowly but sincerely as he nodded in what looked like satisfaction.

Mycroft strode back to his table, and Sherlock returned to his. He took his seat again, hardly registering the glowing exclamations of praise and astonishment from his friends and associates.

"My God, _Sherlock!_ I knew you could dance, but I never knew you could _dance!_" (John); "Sherlock, that was bloody beautiful." (Lestrade); "Wow, Freak. Just wow." (Donovan); "You know I'm dead straight, but I just have to ask: Will you marry me?" (Anderson); "Smoking hot!" (DC Smyth). Apparently, the donations of appreciation post-dance were sending the figures through the roof.

It all went right past Sherlock like an inconsequential breeze. He wasn't sparing any of it much attention. Instead, he was replaying everything in his mind that he'd missed Mycroft telling him for years and years, through their dancing and more. He was also saving this dance very carefully in his memory, because he had so much more that he needed to understand about how Mycroft had touched him, held him, moved him – what it all meant, what it all said.

Several other pieces began to fall into place in the frame he was inspecting closely, and it struck him hard that, damn it, Lord Somers _knew_. The loony earl, close friend and sometime-rumoured bisexual lover of their Uncle Rudy, _knew _about Mycroft's feelings for Sherlock somehow. Or he'd guessed at them, and had in one fell stroke managed to out Mycroft to Sherlock through this while attempting to get back at Sherlock for being rude to him.

Was there malice behind Lord Somers' actions, or was he doing something Uncle Rudy might possibly have done if he were still with them? Or… oh God, had he outed Mycroft to Sherlock because he _knew_ that Mycroft, once exposed to Sherlock, would retreat in shame and refuse to ever discuss this with him, and that this was in fact the worst way to punish Sherlock?

Sherlock, feeling the unsettling grip of panic sinking its talons into him like the ghost of Great-aunt Patricia, glanced swiftly in the direction of Mycroft's table to seek reassurance, or confirmation, or even merely some mental inspiration from him to answer these questions he couldn't answer about Lord Somers' motives.

Only to see that his brother's seat was empty.

Mycroft had left the ball.

* * *

**Note:** As far as I know, the Home Office doesn't have annual charity balls (at least not on this scale), so the event is a made-up one. And also as far as I know, there is no such fund called the Narwhal Fund For The Gifted, but similar funds certainly exist, except by different names.


	2. Act Two

**Act Two**

What was the choreography for this long-running dance they were engaged in? Sherlock stilled himself, thinking, projecting: What would the logical next act be? And the logical final act? How was the dance supposed to end? No, the question was: How did he want it to end?

He opened his eyes, looked at Lestrade and John, and stated: "I have to go."

John started to get up with him, but Sherlock told him: "You stay and enjoy the rest of the dinner. There's something I need to do."

"Any danger in it?" John asked.

"Physically, none."

"Are you…"

"No drugs, promise."

"Sherlock…"

"I promise."

"Okay."

Lestrade called after him, but he heard John say: "I think he needs to think something through on his own for a bit. I doubt it's a danger night…"

Sherlock wasted a few minutes checking the men's loos and the designated smoking area outside, although Mycroft was unlikely to have lingered. He wanted to be sure, because this might just have turned into a danger night for Mycroft, the sort of evening on which his brother might resort to inhaling cigarettes or quietly going to pieces inside a cubicle. But he was no longer on the premises.

At events like this one, where other Cabinet dignitaries were present and security was high, his driver-cum-bodyguard would have been on standby to whisk him off in case of a threat or emergency. If the car had been in a VIP space, he would have been able to leave almost immediately without waiting for it to be brought round. Where had he gone? Home? The Diogenes Club? One of his offices? At his offices, he could direct his people to refuse everyone entry. Or he could withdraw into the club, where he had private rooms that even Sherlock could not easily access without permission.

But his house was where he would go if he wanted complete freedom to lose himself in his own mind-altering substances of choice: whisky, loneliness, and sleep. While he had always closed one eye to the security loopholes that had allowed _only _Sherlock to break in on many an occasion, it would be a simple matter for him to plug them the moment he got home. Sherlock would be shut out.

His instincts told him that he had to catch Mycroft now, while he was still off-balance and, astonishingly, in the process of _fleeing_. If he didn't, his brother would vanish for a period of time until a bigger crisis cropped up to absorb Sherlock (in their work, bigger crises were always around the corner). Not only that, he would clam up thereafter and raise a brand-new layer of barricades, never to discuss this with any openness. The dance would change, the choreography would be altered, and Sherlock would be directed away from the steps he was starting to think he might truly want to take.

He began to run towards Westminster Bridge, keeping an eye out for a cab as he did. Traffic was on the heavy side this evening, so Mycroft's car might be stuck for a while somewhere, but the drive to his home was still direct enough for Sherlock's shortcuts through back lanes and over rooftops to be of little advantage. He needed wheels. At the end of Westminster Bridge, he glanced back and spotted a cab with its sign lit, travelling in the direction he was going in. He flagged it down, gave the cabbie the address of Mycroft's St James's town house, and asked him to get there as quickly as possible.

Driving to the street where Mycroft lived took no more than five minutes, but was it five minutes too late? No – to his relief, the familiar black Jaguar was outside the house, and the driver-bodyguard was walking round to the back of the car to open the door. Mycroft might have needed some moments to sit there and process things before he was ready to step out of the vehicle; if so, it had given Sherlock precious time to catch up. He stopped the taxi a few metres behind the car, told the cabbie to keep the change, and got out.

"Mycroft," he called, once his brother had unfolded his long, lean figure from the back seat onto the pavement and touched the tip of his umbrella to the ground.

The bodyguard eyed Sherlock attentively but with little surprise, because it was far from uncommon for him to make sudden appearances at his brother's home and workplaces; the whole security team had grown accustomed to his behaviour.

Mycroft, however, was not nearly as collected as his bodyguard for once. From the back, Sherlock saw his frame stiffen for a second before it went a little softer, most likely in resignation. He took another moment – as if to steel himself – before he turned around, the features of his face arranged into a neutral expression.

"If you've come to petulantly demand that I should have Lord Somers hanged, drawn and quartered, I regret to inform you that for professional and ethical reasons which I'm sure you believe I've never cared for, I am unable to do so. Personally, of course, I wish I were," Mycroft said with one of his restrained smiles – the one he used when he was seconds away from terminating the conversation with whomever he was speaking to.

Sherlock had told himself that he had come seeking answers. How much did Lord Somers know? What had he really been aiming at? Why hadn't Mycroft been open with him? _What were their next steps supposed to be?_

But as he looked at Mycroft now, he saw past the studiously indifferent expression of his face to the pain he had tried to hide but which Sherlock had observed when they danced. Some of his questions were answered in what he could read in his brother's eyes: Mycroft believed Lord Somers had taken no prisoners in his strike against Sherlock and had unkindly slashed right through Mycroft as well, exposing him to his younger brother who would show him no mercy and choose to sever even their fraternal relationship. By giving Sherlock cause to refuse all further protection from and association with Mycroft, Lord Somers had ensured Sherlock's eventual ruin.

He saw that Mycroft was taking desperate steps to preserve at least the façade of their relationship as siblings, so that he would be allowed to spend the rest of his life performing the thankless job of giving Sherlock all the protection he could offer.

"If you've had your fill of amusement running after me as though you needed to hunt me down, please go home and summarise your grievances in a message, and I shall address them in the morning," Mycroft sighed uninterestedly. "In fact, whatever your complaints might be, surely one, or several, of your usual caustic texts would have sufficed, without your having to go to the trouble of chasing me down. Now, if you don't have anything to say, I'm going in. It's been quite an evening."

If he let Mycroft go now, they could pretend that nothing had changed. They would soon return to their default schema of taking competitive, semi-hostile verbal shots at each other, both trying to come out on top in a war that would never have a clear winner. It was what they'd done for years from the time Mycroft had moved out of their parents' home. It was familiar; it was energising in a dysfunctional way; it was a dynamic that seemed to work for them. But was it what he wanted?

Sherlock stilled himself as he had just before leaving the ballroom, and took a hard look at the tired old marks chalked on the ground that were visible only to the two of them as they'd danced around each other half their lives in a holding pattern.

He made a decision to step out of the grid.

Trying not to sound as breathless as he felt, Sherlock said before Mycroft could turn away from him: "It's a good thing I've always known your name and where you live, otherwise, I'd be knocking on doors now, and you didn't leave so much as a glass slipper behind."

Mycroft's eyes widened, betraying his surprise, although he had enough self-command not to let the rest of the mask slip. A polar opposite to John (who was an open book mirroring every thought in the constantly fluctuating expressions of his face), Mycroft was a cipher to the rest of the world.

Sherlock, however, had learnt over the years to read him. And he had spent the better part of his life using the privilege of his ability to read that complex cipher only to extract the entertaining bits so he could undermine and mock him. Now, having taken a step outside the prescribed order of the old pattern they'd been following, he looked at Mycroft from this new angle and saw nothing to laugh at where once he might have sneered. His brother had braced himself for bitter condemnation with a generous helping of disgust or a cold interrogation, but Sherlock had blown the whole pattern open with an improvised sequence of steps, and he now perceived, after the initial surprise in Mycroft's eyes, the shadow of faint disbelief, then the shape of a small, timid hope forming, succeeded by uncertainty, a momentary retreat into fearful suspicion, and finally, the emergence of a decision to take a chance.

"I… am given to understand that Lobb's considers glass an impractical material for footwear," Mycroft spoke as guardedly as if shoe materials had suddenly become a state secret.

"I'd have been happy to take a silk-laced black patent Oxford instead," Sherlock said, his voice slightly hushed, casting a glance at Mycroft's shoes as he stepped a little closer, careful not to frighten off the tiny, wary thing he'd identified as hope in the Pandora's box of Mycroft's eyes.

"Going from door to door with a gentleman's size 11 leather lace-up would be a profoundly peculiar exercise, even for you," Mycroft noted, dipping his head a little and self-consciously shifting his grip on the umbrella handle.

"I believe it would be worth the trouble. You left so early, the Jaguar hasn't even started transforming into a variety of squash yet," Sherlock said, gesturing briefly at the car as he took a few more steps towards Mycroft. He spared a quick glance at the driver, whose no-nonsense sidelong look at Sherlock dared him to extend his analogy far enough to reach rat-coachman territory. "Even Big Ben was nowhere near striking twelve."

"I believe the clock tower is still undergoing repairs, so the bell wouldn't have chimed in any case," Mycroft remarked, turning the handle of his umbrella 30 degrees anticlockwise for no apparent reason.

"Of course – I'd forgotten about that."

After a pause in which he seemed at last to register the fact that they were still standing out on the pavement with the driver listening to their every word, Mycroft asked with a note of uncertainty: "Would you like to come in…?"

Sherlock could tell that the slight trailing-off of his brother's voice was because he'd been about to say "for a coffee", and the common euphemistic connotation of the phrase was nudging it so near the heart of the matter that he couldn't bring himself to complete the line.

"Yes," Sherlock said at once, accepting the invitation as it stood.

The driver, not yet a rat, saw them to the door. Mycroft keyed in his security codes and slid in the physical key, thanked and dismissed the man, and then they were alone together.

On all his visits to Mycroft's house – _invasions _of his home, to put it more accurately – Sherlock had brazenly done as he'd pleased without fear of retribution. Tonight, on his best behaviour like a suitor come calling, he hovered in the foyer beside the master of the house until Mycroft asked, rather awkwardly: "Would you like some… coffee… in the drawing room?"

He looked apprehensive.

"I would, thanks," Sherlock said, thinking that they had never exchanged such uninspired lines with each other in their entire lives, and he would never have imagined that he and Mycroft would resort to stilted formality fraught with undercurrents to pretend that they weren't tumbling down Lord Loony's rabbit hole into an undiscovered dimension.

The kitchen, on the lowest level of the house, held whatever Mycroft needed for his scanty meals and hot beverages. But on the first floor, next to the drawing room, was a nook that Uncle Rudy had once used as heaven-knew-what; Mycroft had repurposed it as a small pantry equipped with a mini fridge and everything necessary for making coffee and tea.

This was where, in silence, Sherlock watched his brother measure out the grounds for the coffee maker – a sleek, sophisticated machine that wouldn't have been out of place on a spaceship captained by a strict minimalist It was as sleek as Mycroft, whose clean-lined silhouette shamed Sherlock into acknowledging to himself that his childishness in persistently labelling his brother "obese" was nothing less than sacrilege. He was all disciplined elegance with an edge of lethality, showcasing the Holmes bloodline in a more refined way than Sherlock felt was displayed in his own appearance and breeding. When they were growing up, relatives had shallowly labelled Sherlock the "prettier" brother. But Sherlock had always thought of himself as bordering on the brash and uncouth, whereas his perception of Mycroft after he'd lost the chubbiness of his adolescence was that he had a delicacy Sherlock lacked – in his skin, his bones, his voice, and his hands. Those sensitive, finely formed, long-fingered hands that could end lives, but had always held Sherlock so carefully.

One of those hands was now holding out to him a cup of coffee balanced on a saucer. Without having to ask, he had made the drink the way Sherlock liked it – black, with two cubes of sugar. Mycroft preferred tea, but he was capable of appreciating good coffee as long as it had a generous dose of milk in it, which he now frothed and added to his own cup.

They made their way into the drawing room. Each of them took an armchair in front of the fireplace, which didn't need to be lit on such a warm summer evening. Even in winter, the excellent central heating in this house made an additional source of warmth a definite luxury rather than a necessity. However, Sherlock knew that Mycroft did sometimes like to have a fire going – he seemed to draw comfort from the varying waves of heat and the flickering light, even if all the smoke-control laws in London meant his fires were very tame versions of the roaring, crackling ones they'd grown up being warmed by in their childhood home, redolent with the scent of different kinds of wood, always sending steady puffs of smoke through the chimneys.

"When we danced at home, we never needed the fireplace lit," Sherlock recalled as he took a sip of his perfectly made coffee. "Even though the house was always cold."

"The dancing kept us toasty," Mycroft smiled at the memory, although the look of apprehension still lingered around the corners of his eyes.

"That must have been why the weekends and vacations always seemed warmer to me, although I don't believe I consciously realised it at the time," Sherlock said, thoughtfully. "You came home from university nearly every weekend, every Christmas, every Easter, and for a good part of the summer, even though Uncle Rudy wanted you to spend more time learning the ropes from him."

"I spent plenty of time with Uncle Rudy," Mycroft huffed, after a sip of his latte. "At one point, during my third year at university, he ran out of things to teach me, to his exasperation. Of course, he then rooted around in the disturbing archives of his mind and unearthed a whole new set of lessons to impart to me not long after that."

"You were also starting to build your own social and political networks at the time," Sherlock noted. "You could have done with spending more of those weekends and vacations winding important people around your little finger."

"They were well wound enough not to need much more twisting," Mycroft said wryly. "Besides, I wouldn't have enjoyed any more time in their company than I already had to pretend to delight in during term. Anyway, it seems that it gave me a certain allure, being so inaccessible."

"But instead of socialising with useful people who would be future international heads of state, Cabinet ministers, business leaders, heads of espionage agencies, the guiding lights in medical, scientific and literary fields around the world, you regularly came home," Sherlock pressed the matter.

"As you can tell from what I do and where I stand in my career, I did and have done all the socialising necessary to use whomever I wished to use, and aid whomever I wished to aid, without missing any advantage at all," Mycroft said patiently.

"You came home for me," Sherlock stated.

"Always," Mycroft confessed softly.

"Even though I was hardly a joy to be around."

"I never enjoyed anyone's company more than yours."

"I never knew that."

"I never wanted you to know that," Mycroft said firmly, the shadow of discomfort shifting again around the corners of his eyes.

"What did you think I would have done?" Sherlock asked.

"I imagined you would have fled like Allerleirauh from her father."

"Says the one who ran away from the ball tonight," Sherlock pointed out.

Mycroft reddened and lifted his cup to his mouth again for a good, long sip, after which he continued: "However, I suspected that the more _probable _response from you might have been an unhealthy curiosity – one that would have urged you to explore the matter and obsessively pursue it to its logical conclusion in a way that would have been most damaging to you at such a young age."

"You mean I would have tried to tempt you just to see how far I could make you go."

"Was I wrong?"

"Probably not. I could well have viewed it as a fascinating experiment."

"Is that what you're doing now? Pursuing it as a fascinating experiment?"

"My immediate instinct would be to deny that, but I know myself well enough to accept that even when it isn't my intention, some bundle of cells somewhere in my brain always looks at everything as a potentially fascinating experiment," Sherlock admitted.

Mycroft lifted his cup off his saucer and raised it briefly in a vague toast to some invisible point in the distance, in a "there you go" gesture of accepting the inevitable.

"But it _isn't _my aim," Sherlock declared quickly. "Tonight, when I saw that your seat was empty, I almost became frantic. I needed to see you. I _wanted _to see you. You guided me through that trial like you've guided me through everything, and I never saw it from that angle until then. You were always there for me, even when I thought you weren't, and I never once thanked you. I don't know what else will occur to me as we go along, but I'm not toying with you. This isn't one of my games. I didn't like how sad you looked when we danced – both long ago, and tonight – and I… I just wanted to see you."

"I didn't look…"

"Yes, you did. You looked unhappy. No one else would have observed it, but I did. You taught me well."

"Perhaps a little too well?"

"Perhaps, but too bad, I'm well in," Sherlock murmured, a smile just touching his lips.

"Have we somehow wandered into the March Hare's tea party?" Mycroft groaned at the nonsensical Dormouse-esque play on "well" while blushing lightly at the connotation of courtship in that expression.

"Well, I _was _just thinking that we'd been sent tumbling down Lord Loony's rabbit hole tonight and I didn't know when we'd manage to dig ourselves out," Sherlock chuckled softly. "But I rather like this slightly mad coffee party of our own, after all."

"Who am I supposed to be now, then?" Mycroft queried whimsically. "The Hatter, the March Hare, the Dormouse, Alice, or Cinderella? Did Cinderella ever tumble down a rabbit hole? _'I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'_"

"Dance with me and we'll find out who you are now," Sherlock suggested playfully, to match Mycroft's apt quoting of Lewis Carroll's Alice. "Muscle memory is a remarkable thing. It really threw me for a loop this evening."

"Haven't you endured more than enough dancing tonight?" Mycroft asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's not about enduring it when I'm dancing with the right partner," Sherlock said, rising from his armchair and setting his almost-empty coffee cup on the side table next to the whisky decanter and glasses before going over to the sideboard.

Mycroft had never tossed out Uncle Rudy's old CD player or albums, and Sherlock knew these things were still stored in one of the sideboard compartments. He found them, plugged the player in and ran his finger along the spines of the CD cases that he had never cared to examine in detail before.

"Ah – so this is how Uncle Rudy, Loony Leonard _and you _got so familiar with Air Supply," Sherlock chuckled, spotting album after album dating from the 1980s and 1990s.

He looked over to where Mycroft was watching him from his armchair, long legs elegantly crossed, one elbow on an armrest with his chin propped up on that hand, while his other hand balanced his cup and saucer on his thigh. _The right partner. _Mycroft would have remembered his own words aimed at Great-aunt Patricia some 19 years ago, and would understand how much more significance they had taken on now that Sherlock was echoing them in reference to Mycroft. To his relief, Sherlock observed that the shadows of unease and apprehension that had lingered on Mycroft's face were fading, and the tiniest of smiles was touching the corners of his mouth.

"You can't begin to imagine how frequently Uncle Rudy played those sappy songs, and how often Lord Somers was here playing cross-dress-up with him, while supposedly happily married to Lady Somers," Mycroft accompanied his words with an eye-roll. "When I stayed here with Uncle Rudy for six months after graduation, before finding my own flat, the music they played was nearly unbearable. Those schmaltzy songs were coming out of my _ears_, Sherlock. And with the two of them prancing around in feather boas on a regular basis, my eyes were _bleeding_."

The mental image of their powerful, secretive, dangerous, brilliant but quite-batty Uncle Rudy wrapped in feather boas with Lord Loony made Sherlock snicker, and he was almost tempted to choose an album with campy numbers on it. But camp wasn't them at all – not him and Mycroft – so he opted for something classy and calming, as he remembered from among the many types of music Mummy and Daddy had sometimes played at home when he was a child.

Shedding his dinner jacket and draping it over one of the chairs at the dining table as the velvety tones of Ella Fitzgerald drifted soothingly out of the slightly-crackly old speakers, Sherlock glided over to the armchair where Mycroft was still seated, took his cup and saucer from him, and set them on the side table. He reached both his hands out for Mycroft's, drew him out of the armchair, and slipped his dinner jacket off him. Mycroft said nothing, but put up no resistance, content for now to let him lead.

Sherlock laid the jacket over the armchair's back rest and looked at his brother in his cream silk shirt, tailored flawlessly to the measurements of his body and secured with antique silver cufflinks, a black silk bow tie, and those sleeve garters that Sherlock had once thought ridiculous and completely unnecessary, but now made his heart beat a bit faster as they were something hidden Mycroft wore that most people didn't get to see. Over the shirt was a low-cut evening waistcoat, in contrast to the cummerbund Sherlock had gone with to match John's outfit.

Perfection.

Sherlock had to clear his throat before he could ask a bit self-consciously: "May I have this dance?"

Mycroft hesitated for a few seconds, but eventually gave him his hand. As Ms Fitzgerald's whipped-cream voice began to pour out the silky lines _"There's a somebody I'm longing to see/I hope that he turns out to be/Someone who'll watch over me…"_, he allowed Sherlock to draw him away from the armchair to the emptier space between the fireplace and the dining table. It wasn't roomy enough for elaborate moves, but the space was more than adequate for… yes, a slow dance – not the polite version one might do at a friend's casual wedding, but a continuation of the one they'd done in the ballroom tonight. A more _intense _continuation of the one they'd begun in the ballroom – familiar, intimate, Sherlock's arms around Mycroft's shoulders, Mycroft's hands close together over the small of Sherlock's back. They had never danced like this in their parents' home or anywhere else, holding each other like lovers. But here and now, their bodies touched, fitting together as if they were made to be a matching pair, and Sherlock knew that this was how he wanted the next steps of their dance to be. It was where he wanted to take the choreography, and where he wished he had taken it a long time ago.

He didn't often look back at things he had done and wish that he had done them differently. What was past was past, and wishing it were otherwise was a pointless indulgence – one could not physically return to a moment gone by to act differently in it. But with Mycroft now, Sherlock wished he could go back in time to undo some of the things he had done to his brother, unsay some of the words he had spoken. He wished he had given Mycroft that slow dance when he'd asked all those years ago. It wouldn't have been a last dance for the road, then; it could have become a first dance of many to come in what might have been a new stage in their relationship. He could have had this so many years ago – the perfect fit of Mycroft's arms around him, the warm, addictive, ever-so-familiar scent of Mycroft's skin under the notes of the tasteful Creed fragrance he was wearing…

"Don't go there," Mycroft whispered in his ear. "I can tell where you're going."

"Maybe I really want to go there," Sherlock whispered back, burying his face in Mycroft's neck as he hadn't been able to do in the ballroom. "I wish I'd slow-danced with you a long time ago, when you asked."

"I don't," Mycroft said, deepening his embrace. "I'm glad you didn't agree to it back then. I asked you for it in a moment of weakness. I knew I had to go, and begin my career, but it was heartbreaking for me to leave you behind. If you'd given me that slow dance then, I might have done something unforgivable like tell you how I felt about you."

"It wouldn't have been unforgivable," Sherlock said, nuzzling Mycroft's ear. "I wish I'd known. I wish you hadn't hidden it so well."

"It _would _have been unforgivable," Mycroft countered. "I said I never wanted to harm you. Letting you know how I felt would have damaged you. Didn't you admit only a few minutes ago that you might have thought it all a fascinating experiment…?"

"I still wish I'd known. You could have kept me in line even if I'd tried to tempt you, and we could have had this so much earlier…"

Mycroft drew his head back to look at his face and to say: "Sherlock, if you were responsible for the care, safety and upbringing of a 15-year-old, would you allow him to become romantically involved with a 22-year-old man? Would you allow him to receive a declaration of love from his adult _brother_? How many times do you think you'd want to kill such a man if he made advances to a young person you were raising?"

"I…"

"You were a _child_. It would have been unforgivable of me."

"But when I was older–"

"Even then, it was not a love that could so much as hint that it even _had _a name," Mycroft stated bluntly.

"When have we ever remained within the boundaries of convention?" Sherlock asked.

"There were also other complications."

At this, he looked into Mycroft's world-weary, work-strained eyes, which had seen horrors he'd tried – and sometimes failed – to shield Sherlock from. High up on the list of the worst nightmares he'd gazed upon were the _complications _that had involved Sherlock himself: the drug overdoses, serious brushes with the law, a near-fatal exile, a second near-exile from which he might never have returned. The biggest obstacle of all would have been Sherlock's obstinate hostility towards Mycroft, and Mycroft's need to grow increasingly controlling just to keep Sherlock whole.

Complications. These arms holding him had held him again and again through all those tribulations, if not literally, then in countless other ways. He'd always been cradled in Mycroft's arms, even when it was killing Mycroft to know that Sherlock had regarded his protective embrace as if it were a straitjacket.

"You're right. There were complications," Sherlock admitted huskily, thinking that the one thing lightening his conscience now was how he could see that in his brother's eyes, the small, timid hope which had nearly run away earlier tonight was starting to look a little brighter, a little surer.

"That's why I'm glad that nothing of this sort happened between us," Mycroft said. "You would hardly have been in a condition to give any manner of level-headed, informed consent, for the most part."

"I'm sorry I was always such a mess."

"It wasn't entirely your fault. You simply could not wrestle all the brilliance in that beautiful head of yours into submission. The methods Mummy and I both used to channel our thoughts and knowledge into socially acceptable avenues were anathema to you. You refused to even pretend to fit in; you wouldn't accommodate a single weakness or failing in anyone. You offended teachers, attracted the ire of schoolmates, terrified neighbours, upset relatives… and all the techniques Mummy and I tried to teach you to adjust to social situations didn't work for you because you thought them insincere and inane."

"How was that _not _my fault?" Sherlock huffed in a mixture of amusement and guilt.

"You were born with an idealism you couldn't control, and that the world didn't know how to deal with. I wish I'd been able to do more to make it easier for you."

"I should have tried harder…"

"We did find little ways here and there, didn't we?" Mycroft smiled. "Remember why Mummy wanted you to learn to dance in the first place? Your new school was the best boys' public school Daddy and Mummy could find that was close enough to our home, didn't require you to be a boarder, and had teachers and a curriculum that were acceptable for meeting a respectable portion of your intellectual needs. The trouble was that you were so far ahead, you enrolled when you were a year younger than other first-years."

"And the school was big on networking and social graces as well as academia," Sherlock remembered.

"You were supposed to take the social-dance lessons conducted by the school to prep for the seasonal events that were held with the girls' school down the road."

"I refused to join my classmates in those lessons," Sherlock mumbled.

"Yes, and Mummy despaired, largely because she remembered that she herself had been a peculiar mathematical genius of a girl with no friends when she was in school, but she'd loved to dance, and was very good at it. Dancing had helped her to socialise better, to understand the people who were afraid of her brilliance, express her deep emotions more healthily, and eventually, because of that, she made friends, and met Daddy, and they fell in love. It was one of the reasons why she and Daddy taught me to dance, and why I attended all the dance practices and social events that _my _school had offered. It helped me socially in many ways. So Mummy thought it would help you. You didn't want to learn it at school, so I taught you what I could. I believe it helped just a little bit?"

"I eventually went to the seasonal school dances, didn't I?" Sherlock asked sulkily. "I danced with the girls, I learnt to give and take, to adapt my pace to the rhythm of others, right? So it did help somewhat, although no one else had even a fraction of your skill and talent. And I did dance well with the girls – according to my schoolmates, some of those girls even had crushes on me after the dances, although I can't imagine why they had such bad taste."

"Are you criticising _my _taste?" Mycroft asked archly.

Sherlock snickered: "Someone with as intimate a knowledge of Air Supply schmaltz as you do has no right to get snippy when his taste is questioned."

Mycroft glared at him. "Ingrate, to criticise the one who spared your blushes tonight in that ballroom."

Sherlock chuckled and wrapped his arms more closely around Mycroft before resting his chin on his shoulder and wondering: "How did Loony Leonard know about your _taste _for me?"

"Don't make it sound so dirty," Mycroft groaned in protest.

"Did Uncle Rudy know how you felt?"

"He never indicated that he did, but there was very little he didn't know."

"I don't suppose it would have come up as a topic for pillow talk with _Lenny_?"

"Unlikely. Uncle Rudy kept secrets very well – even from his lovers."

"So Lord Loony noticed all by himself?"

"Lord Somers is much more observant than he makes himself out to be. And you should stop using your childish name for him – it gets you into trouble when you forget that you shouldn't use it in front of other people."

Leonard, Lord Somers, had always been "Lenny" to their parents and Uncle Rudy. At the age of seven, Sherlock had scoffed to Mycroft that the flamboyant earl wasn't so much "Lenny" as he was "Loony", and forever after, that was how he'd obstinately referred to him.

"He deserves nothing less than to be branded a loon for the remainder of his natural life, after the stunt he pulled this evening," Sherlock grumbled. "Although, given what is currently an extremely agreeable outcome of his challenge to us, I might spare him the hanging, drawing and quartering, after all."

"Perhaps a brisk and efficient trip to the guillotine would suffice."

"I concur."

"At last, we agree on something without an argument over it," Mycroft said jovially. "I think we _are _still in Wonderland."

"Off with his head!" Sherlock quoted the Queen of Hearts.

Mycroft laughed and spun Sherlock in a slow circle as Ella Fitzgerald began to sing of being bewitched, bothered and bewildered – all things true of how their relationship had been in many phases of their lives.

"Was he there at that party Mummy and Daddy held at home? The one where you seized my hand and came to my rescue like a knight in shining armour, with Great-aunt Patricia playing the dragon?" Sherlock asked teasingly, leaning back again to look at Mycroft.

"Ah, _that _one," Mycroft recalled. "I believe Lord Somers _was _there."

"Maybe he saw how romantic your protectiveness of me was," Sherlock murmured. "It was, you know – you swept me off my feet."

Mycroft smiled. "Did I?"

"Is he going to give us any more trouble after this? And quite apart from him, are we going to have problems with any recordings that people might have made of our dance tonight?"

"My instinct is that Lord Somers was being mischievous on a purely personal level rather than malicious with a larger scheme in view," Mycroft said. "However, I will have a word with him soon to decipher his intentions better."

"And if people were filming us with their phones?"

"The window of vulnerability for us passed some time ago," Mycroft said. "I didn't want Mummy videoing us when we were younger because we hadn't achieved a thing in our careers. It's different now. We've each built formidable reputations that have survived near-destruction and been rebuilt even more strongly. Footage of a charity-ball dance won't make much of a dent. As far as the spectators are concerned, it was a _performance _and nothing more. With regard to whether it might give our enemies ideas about how close we are to each other when we were previously assumed to have been at loggerheads, I believe it makes little difference. Those who are strong enough to oppose us are the same ones with the resources and intelligence to have already known from long ago that I would always help you in any dangerous situation, no matter what terms we were on; those who didn't already know this before tonight don't have the wherewithal to pose significant danger to us."

"You're being unusually optimistic," Sherlock remarked with some surprise.

"Well, it's not every night that some dashing prince comes in pursuit of me, babbling about glass slippers and pumpkins."

"I was not babbling," Sherlock objected indignantly. "I spoke in the most measured tones so as not to frighten my skittish _Cinderella _into taking flight again. Because, you know, all these runaway belles of the ball are _terribly _hard to pin down once they scarper."

Mycroft's cheeks coloured. "I thought you would despise me more than you had ever despised me after reading me only too well in that dance. We were taken by surprise and had no time to prepare, obviously, so I needed to be as readable to you as possible on the dance floor, although I risked exposing my feelings. By the end of the dance, my worst fears were realised, and I believed that no good would come of lingering in the ballroom."

"Didn't you feel me moving closer to you as we danced? Didn't you know that I wasn't repulsed by what I'd decoded?"

"I thought you were merely running a test to see if your hypothesis was correct."

"Oh, ye of little faith."

"I haven't had much reason for a long time to believe that any such faith would be substantiated," Mycroft retorted.

"I suppose that is true," Sherlock admitted. "But if you run again, I'll chase you down every time."

"You won't think better of your impulsive pursuit tonight, after you've slept on it, and realise that it might be better to let me go to ground if I vanish?"

Sherlock looked at him. "When you turned and walked onto the dance floor, you knew I would follow you without even having to check if I was. When you led me _perfectly _in that dance which was so beautiful that even people who were dying to laugh at us couldn't summon a single giggle, you knew I would follow. I can and I _will _follow you, Mycroft."

Mycroft stopped moving to the music and said seriously: "Sherlock, as much as I want to race ahead with you in this new direction, I _do _need you to sleep on this."

"I know what I want."

"I've had years to think about my feelings for you, turn them over in my head, force them into hiding, bring them back out and weep over them, to see every reason why they were wrong and could never be fulfilled, and think of them as a secret I would take to my grave without ever troubling you with them. You've thought about this for exactly _one _evening. I'll take this evening for what it is – as a night of more than I could have realistically hoped for, and if it's the last such evening I have with you, then I would treasure it for the rest of my life, and be very happy with all these days to come in which I'll know we're going to get along better as brothers because you don't think of me as your archenemy any more. It would be enough for me."

"It wouldn't be enough for me," Sherlock told him.

"Sherlock…" Mycroft sighed.

"No one touches me like you do, no one holds me like you do – I don't mean just on a physical level, although that in itself is unique, because I couldn't decode it for a really long time even when I was able to decode everything else about you. It seems I just wasn't looking for it the whole time I was taking you for granted as a fixture in my life. But when I finally could see it, when I finally could decode it, I knew at once that all the lovers I've ever had, the few close friends I've been privileged to make in recent years, and even Mummy and Daddy… no one's touch speaks to me like yours does, and I never knew until now that what it was saying was 'I love you'."

They weren't slow-dancing any more, just facing each other, bodies flush. Mycroft was vulnerable again, blushing and laid open to his brother's eyes, and Sherlock knew he would willingly crawl through every mirror linking their old world with this new one and cut himself on a thousand crystal shards, whether they came from broken looking glasses or shattered slippers, to run after Mycroft no matter where he went.

"You should revisit some of your old lovers…" Mycroft said weakly, "… to see if this is really what you want…"

"This is my choreography for a dance that I don't ever want to end," Sherlock whispered, slipping his hands round from the back of Mycroft's neck to caress his face, memorising the feel of the softening skin that had lost the firmness of youth but had never looked so appealing to Sherlock. "I've changed the pattern of our movements and I'm asking if you're willing to improvise with me."

"One's willingness to do something and the wisdom of doing it may often be at odds," Mycroft noted sensibly, although his hands were gliding over Sherlock's hips with a shade of marginally less sensible possessiveness in his touch.

"I think we're both wise enough now to do this," Sherlock said, gently nipping at Mycroft's jaw and feeling, for the first time in his life, the beginnings of an erection in Mycroft's trousers while they were in such close contact. It said something important to Sherlock – the fact that all those years they'd danced together, he'd never deduced or observed even the slightest stiffening in Mycroft's pants. Mycroft hadn't lusted after him but had simply loved him, hadn't wanted to use him for gratification but wished to guide him responsibly, and had smothered his feelings for Sherlock so strictly that he hadn't even allowed himself to succumb to his normal physical responses – or at least, never allowed Sherlock to suspect a thing.

"To make this both possible _and _wise, are we to pull off six impossible things before breakfast every day?" Mycroft asked breathlessly, tilting his head to let Sherlock undo his bow tie and nip softly at his throat.

"If we have to, we will. Who else do we know who routinely pulls off impossible things before breakfast? There's no one else I'd rather chart these steps with than you."

"Let's take it slow – let's not rush into this."

"We're not rushing anything – it can't possibly be too early in this dance for a kiss, can it?" Sherlock asked, reading in the caresses Mycroft was giving him over his back, his hips and the curves of his bottom that it wasn't too soon at all, not when those touches were saying _I love you, I love you, and I'm glad you know._

"Probably not, although I don't think it's ethical to kiss someone who still doesn't know who he is," Mycroft teased.

"Mycroft Holmes, I don't care if your latest alias is Cinderella, Alice, the Hatter, the March Hare or the Dormouse – I know who you are."

"And who am I?"

"My perfect partner, of course."

"Who's the expert on schmaltz now, Sherlock?" Mycroft asked ironically, though he was pulling Sherlock closer, ever closer, even as he teased him.

"I really don't care – I think we've earned the right to a bit of schmaltz after everything that's led up to this moment," Sherlock murmured breathily, smiling at the light in his brother's eyes that showed what had been a delicate, slender hope evolving into something stronger, something very much like belief.

It was exactly the right moment to work his fingers into Mycroft's hair and draw him in for a kiss, soft and tentative at first, then bolder and more exploratory. And with his very first taste of Mycroft, Sherlock knew from the strange-familiar, new-old, comforting-exciting contradiction of sensations flooding him that it wasn't the wrong move at all but the perfect next step for them to take in a dance that wasn't going to be their last – not by a long shot.


	3. Act Three

**Act Three**

It was a wonder the armchair hadn't collapsed. They'd manoeuvred themselves from the dining table back to the fireplace, not with the smooth moves they'd shown off on the dance floor earlier, but in clumsy fashion, kissing deeply, with plenty of treading on leather-shod toes. It didn't seem physically possible for that ancient piece of furniture to hold two tall, grown men like them, but he'd somehow inelegantly clambered into Mycroft's lap as his brother settled into one of the armchairs. Which miraculously remained intact.

The moves were ungainly, but they _felt_ to Sherlock like the best ones they'd made all evening, because his hands were reverently caressing Mycroft's skin under his shirt, his tongue was exploring his mouth, and _nothing_ at all was troubling, disturbing or alien about him. Every new lover was a little strange at the beginning, exposing hitherto undiscovered details to get used to. But everything about his brother – the heat of his breaths, the texture of his skin, the taste of him, the rhythm of his heart – was inviting and familiar even though Sherlock had never known him in this manner before.

Mycroft's touch, as always, was just right for Sherlock, with the added magical quality of drawing the most delicious shivers from him. More buttons were undone, more skin uncovered, their kisses increasingly possessive. However, when Sherlock's fingers went to the side fasteners of Mycroft's trousers to loosen them, Mycroft stopped him, putting his hands over his.

"Would you be terribly upset if I asked you to go no further tonight?" Mycroft softened his request with the gentleness of his voice and a loving nuzzle of Sherlock's cheek.

"Too soon?" Sherlock asked.

"Mm, yes. I really do want you to sleep on this – you've only just declared your feelings for me, and those feelings have only just made themselves known to you. So it isn't unwise for us to take some time to think about it."

"You _do_ know, don't you," Sherlock purred teasingly into Mycroft's left ear. "That however far we go, I'll still respect you in the morning."

"Liar," Mycroft shot back fondly. "You've _never_ respected me at any time."

Sherlock snickered, Mycroft huffed, then they were chuckling softly, arms tightening around each other.

"You're changing my choreography, though," Sherlock complained, pressing his cheek against Mycroft's left temple, savouring the contrasting textures of skin and soft wavy strands at his hairline.

"I'm not overhauling it, only adding a few more turns and a couple of scenes so that we don't rush the climax."

"Oh my God, did you just make a dirty, tacky double entendre, Brother dear?" Sherlock chortled.

"As we've been dreadfully dirty and tacky all night, with Air Supply, glass slippers, bunny wells and the like, why not close it on a consistent note?" Mycroft smirked.

"But you've got me even more hot and bothered now."

"Back to Baker Street you go for a cold shower," he ordered.

Sherlock was reluctant. He stole one more kiss and was pleased to hear Mycroft moan softly under the pressure of his mouth. But then his brother eased him away, helped him slip his dinner jacket back on, ran his fingers through his curly hair (as if Sherlock were a messy child again) to tidy it the best he could without grooming tools, rang for a cab, and walked him down to the foyer.

"You're _really_ throwing me out?" he asked, trying his luck, angling his body slightly to get in the way of Mycroft's reaching for the door handle. "You never throw me out – you're always relieved when I'm here instead of getting into trouble somewhere else."

"I'm merely asking you to go back to your flat so that we don't tear through this mindlessly as though it were a sprint rather than a marathon," Mycroft said patiently. "I would be very happy if you would stay out of trouble until you visit me again tomorrow evening."

"But not to stay the night?" Sherlock asked, reading the unspoken message.

"Not yet. All right, the cab is here. Do you have enough money for the ride?"

"Yes."

Mycroft pecked him on the cheek and opened the front door. "Good night, Sherlock. I'll see you tomorrow."

He stepped out of the house and turned to look at his brother standing to one side in the doorway of the foyer where he couldn't be seen from the street, wearing his half-buttoned-up silk shirt now entirely divested of its bow tie, cufflinks and waistcoat, his hair all mussed up. It had been forever since Sherlock had seen Mycroft so dishevelled (in a good way) and he grinned at the delectable vision he presented.

"I'll keep coming back until you're ready," he promised.

"I look forward to that," Mycroft said, blushing lightly – Sherlock was sure of it, even in the colour-neutralising shadows of the doorway.

He then left like the respectful suitor he was trying to be, although the ardent suitor that he was wished he didn't have to. He no longer knew who was leading and who was following in this dance of theirs. Perhaps they were switching, taking turns in another battle of wills as they entered a new stage. While it was unusual for them to be this vague about who was in control, it was also rather exciting, he thought, rambling through this new world for which he had no reliable map, where nothing was obvious or straightforward. He couldn't even say for certain if either of them was in charge right now.

In any case, he returned the next night, bearing a gift of wine. A good Merlot, which he knew would suit Mycroft's palate. One of John's doctor friends had given him a bottle last Christmas, and even back then, when Mycroft hadn't been on his mind in a romantic way, he'd been the first person Sherlock had thought of who might like this sort of wine the moment he'd tasted it.

On this night, they finished an entire bottle between them, resulting in Mycroft sounding distinctly amused as he remarked: "That was an excellent Merlot, Sherlock, but I must wonder if you're trying to get me drunk."

"Is it working?" Sherlock asked, pleased to see that the strengthening glow of belief in Mycroft's eyes that had evolved from last night's wisp of hope was settling in and looking healthier, although it seemed to be engaged in some manner of warring pas de deux with an entity that appeared to be something Sherlock would call hesitation.

"Not quite, but it's a good try," Mycroft said, adding, tongue-in-cheek: "You know I'm not the kind of man who beds someone just because they've whispered sweet nothings into my ear."

They were sprawled on the chaise longue in the library, and Mycroft's shirt was completely unbuttoned this time, which Sherlock thought was a half-step up from being mostly clothed in an armchair in the drawing room. But it was still not close enough to getting to do everything with him.

"On the contrary," Sherlock smiled. "I believe you're the kind of man who would bed someone you care nothing for because it would be a useful tool for controlling that person for the brief time that you need him or her."

"The perils of my work," Mycroft murmured dryly.

"Is that why you're hesitant to move faster with me? Because I actually mean something to you?" Sherlock whispered.

"I'm sure that has a great deal to do with it."

They left it there.

On the third evening, they at least made it to Mycroft's bed, but still didn't get far, although his brother's taste and scent and voice and touch were becoming so intoxicating to Sherlock that he knew no one else would do for him ever again, even if this didn't work out for any reason.

"I'm beginning to wonder if you're expecting me to _marry _you before we have sex," Sherlock remarked good-humouredly, and a tad suspiciously.

Mycroft laughed heartily. "A lovely thought, although it wouldn't be allowed – but no, Sherlock, I'm not waiting for us to be joined in flagrantly unholy matrimony."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"For us to know that we're truly ready for the next step, and not persuading ourselves that we are merely because our hormones are shouting more loudly than everything else."

"I've always maintained that the body's just transport, but this very moment, my transport could do with a lot more attention."

"I'm giving your transport _plenty_ of attention," Mycroft said, nibbling his ear and slipping a hand under Sherlock's shirt.

"_Mmm…_ so… how about a thorough _servicing_, then?" Sherlock asked playfully, pitching his voice low.

"Who's the one spouting dirty, tacky lines now?" Mycroft chuckled.

Sherlock huffed. Although he felt slightly impatient and frustrated, he kept those feelings far, far down in his soul, because just as Mycroft had handled him so carefully all his life, never imposing his unbrotherly desires on him, Sherlock chose to hold Mycroft carefully in return now, without pushing him to move faster than he was choosing to.

He did, however, begin to wonder if perhaps Mycroft's love for him had been so pure for so many years that his brother couldn't really rouse himself to be that eager for the physical aspects of their new relationship. If so, could he accept leaving things as they were? Maybe Mycroft had spent so long treating him as something never to be tainted by his impure urges that he couldn't stop conflating Sherlock the child with the adult he had become.

Never mind, Sherlock thought. In some versions of the tale, even the prince had to chase Cinderella down at least three times before winning her as his bride.

Unfortunately, he was held back from seeing Mycroft the next day. Although it was a Saturday, and he'd planned to spend the afternoon as well as the evening with him, he had to work with Lestrade on a case that was turning out to be a follow-up of the missing-heirloom matter he had helped Lord Somers with. In that first matter, the heirloom had vanished because a grand-nephew of Lord Loony's who was staying at one of the earl's London houses had opportunistically made off with it. Sherlock, of course, had promptly figured out who the culprit was from among the visitors, residents and staff in the household, ignoring all the evidence against a part-time housekeeper whom the grand-nephew had set up as a scapegoat. The item was retrieved and the grand-nephew soundly rebuked. The same entitled and unrepentant creature, however, was apparently now hoping to run off with valuables from his mother's cousin's party. It was a good thing the hostess – a daughter of Lord Somers – had got wind of the scheme. She'd only heard about it because her unsavoury young relative (who was none too bright – a fact Sherlock had worked out in 0.5 seconds when solving the first case) had stupidly said something odd to a cousin who had repeated it to another cousin, and Lady Anna Carstairs had put two and two together, and quickly contacted Scotland Yard as well as Sherlock.

The tricky bit was that if they didn't identify each of the accomplices Frank Oldfield was working with at Lady Anna's party before moving in, the rest of them would be alerted, only half the gang would be caught, and Oldfield – who was not invited to the party – would run away. Lestrade needed Sherlock's observational skills before his team made a single move.

So Sherlock, John, and Lestrade's team entered Lady Anna's Belgravia mansion early in the evening, dressed as if they'd been invited to her soiree. But instead of making themselves noticeable, they slipped into a spacious (and unnecessarily luxurious) rear vestibule of the main reception room. There, a two-way mirror gave them a view of the reception room where the party was held, so Sherlock could observe everyone. He paid special attention to the caterers, hired musicians, part-time servers and the people whom Lady Anna's husband, Glen Carstairs, pointed out to him as plus-ones of their invited guests. By 8.30pm, when all the guests had arrived, Sherlock studied their body language and giveaways, and picked out one of the catering assistants, one of the servers, and a date brought by one of the guests. Earlier, he'd also watched the people downstairs as they'd carried things in and out of the house, and had picked out a catering-van driver as a possible suspect too.

From there, it was surprisingly smooth sailing for the police. The gang was extremely light-fingered, working so swiftly that it was mainly Sherlock who caught each move. First, while the server distracted a guest seated on one of the ottomans by topping up her wine glass with more Gewürztraminer, the catering assistant nudged the woman's handbag under the cloth covering the long table where the finger food and cheese were laid out, and promptly left the room with a covered food-warmer tray. A quick word from Lestrade, and Donovan had the catering assistant quietly pulled aside into another room in the house. The handbag was found in the covered tray, and the man was removed from the premises.

Even as the catering assistant was being arrested, the server unpinned – in a split second – an enormous diamond brooch on someone's satin bolero jacket that was draped over the back of a chair. DC Kaur, dressed as a mobile-cocktail-bar server, was the one to receive an alert in her earpiece from Lestrade, and she quietly informed Glen Carstairs which server he needed to call aside on a pretext.

"Oh, Stephen," Carstairs said innocently to the thieving server in question, with all the air of distraction that the host of an evening soiree could be expected to display when he was worried about looking after every guest properly. "It's not just the catered food we're serving tonight – my sister-in-law has also sent over some home-baked Viennese biscuits that need to be brought up. Would you please nip down to the kitchen for the trays on the counter?"

Once the man was out of the room, the team pulled him aside also and retrieved the brooch.

At the same time that was going on, the suspicious plus-one who had accompanied an invited guest was taking advantage of her ability to get very close to the other guests to surreptitiously and one-handedly unclasp a loose emerald bracelet from the wrist of a woman she was seated beside while the group was animatedly chatting and laughing. Not noticing that her jewellery was now unclasped, the guest also failed to notice that it was left behind on the sofa when she next moved her hand from the cushion. The item promptly made its way into an inside pocket of the plus-one's cocktail dress.

This woman got nervous when she noted that her two accomplices were no longer in the room. But her nervousness turned out to be to the advantage of the police because, as a result, they didn't need to come up with an excuse to isolate her from the rest of the guests. Instead, she excused herself, presumably wanting it to look like she was going to the loo when it was more likely that she was going in search of her friends. She too was pulled aside once she had left the room, searched, and the bracelet recovered.

In order not to embarrass Lady Anna and Glen Carstairs by letting it be known that a gang of thieves had been working their party, the team now swung into "replace and restore" mode – something that they had specially obtained clearance for with the assistant commissioner, with some added pressure applied by Lord Somers. DC Smyth, also in the guise of a mobile cocktail-bar server, carried the stolen Birkin back into the reception room in a small alcohol crate and slid it out from under the cloth covering the long table. She then quietly informed the guest that her handbag seemed to have "tipped over". DC Kaur told the other guest she had picked up her brooch from the carpet after it appeared to have come loose from her bolero. And Lady Anna was the one who took the stolen bracelet back to the sofa, where she sat down and pretended to be surprised that she seemed to be sitting on something… and _"_… _oh! Isn't this your bracelet, Jeannie?"_ After which she turned to the guest whose date had just been arrested, and whispered to him: _"Herbert, I'm sorry, but I just met Belinda in the front vestibule, and she said she'd suddenly felt quite unwell – my assistant called a cab for her, and she's gone."_

Lestrade was told by his off-site team that the catering-van driver had also been arrested after they had found messages on his phone to the other accomplices about what sort of valuables to target at the party. Having confirmed that all the suspects were in custody, Lady Anna then held quick discussions with her assistant to arrange for back-up manpower to replace the catering assistant and the server. (Sherlock was relieved that none of the string quartet hired to play at the soiree were involved, otherwise he might have felt obliged to help out on the violin, unrehearsed – and it was very likely that no one would have appreciated that.)

By 9pm, all was secure.

"Sherlock, Dr Watson, thank you _so_ much for taking care of this case so discreetly that it hasn't disrupted my party at all," Lady Anna said softly to them once she had a chance to slip into the rear vestibule. "And thank you, Detective Inspector Lestrade, for your team managing everything so quietly that not one of my _genuine_ guests has even noticed that the police have been removing people from the house!"

"Please don't mention it, Lady Anna," Lestrade smiled at her. "We were glad for the tip-off about your cousin's son – we've had our eyes on him and his friends for some time because of other crimes we'd suspected them of, although we had no evidence – and now we've caught them in the act. Only Sherlock could have so quickly worked out who all of Oldfield's accomplices might be just by observing everybody, so I'm glad he could be here."

"_Sherlock_," Lady Anna smiled warmly, taking both his hands in hers, her burgundy taffeta dress rustling as she moved closer to him. "I know that you and Mycroft had a spot of bother with my father recently, and I _am_ sorry if he caused you trouble – Daddy can be terribly eccentric, as you know. But you were still kind enough to help me out this evening."

"Well, you're not your father," Sherlock muttered, not entirely ungraciously, for he had nothing against Lord Loony's daughter – she was Mycroft's age, tall for a woman (she had certainly inherited her height from her father), and had always struck Sherlock as a sensible human being (she had certainly not inherited her father's battiness). "I _was_ impolite to him, so it made sense that he would strike back. Anyway, this has been an interesting follow-up to the matter of the stolen necklace that he hired me for."

"_About _that case," Lestrade said with a glare directed at Sherlock and John. "Which you two partners in crime-fighting so casually brought up at the charity ball as being merely about 'a missing heirloom' – if you and Lord Somers had only told the police that Frank Oldfield had stolen it, we could have picked him up. Then Lady Anna wouldn't have had to worry about what _else_ her relative might have planned this evening."

"Well, Lord Somers had hoped to spare his grand-nephew an arrest, questioning, and possible time in prison," John said sheepishly. "And Mr Oldfield had promised to behave from then on."

"A promise he broke almost immediately after," Lestrade observed. "By planning a bloody heist at his mother's cousin's party, where there's a Ming vase worth 35 million quid in the reception room, and each guest seems to be wearing jewellery and wristwatches that for all I know cost ten times what my flat would go for on the property market!"

"I apologise _again_ for all the trouble my family has caused," Lady Anna sighed in embarrassment, just as her husband entered the rear vestibule to join them. Turning to him, she said: "Oh, Glen, it's all over – they've caught and removed all of Frankie's accomplices ever so quietly!"

"Thank goodness, and thank _you_, gentlemen," Glen Carstairs said in relief, shaking hands with Lestrade, Sherlock and John before turning to his wife. "Darling, I've been holding the fort the best I can, but your friends are starting to wonder where you are – _and _your father has arrived – he's meandering through the gallery with a guest of his own."

"Heavens, I must return to my guests," Lady Anna said. "Sherlock, Dr Watson, Detective Inspector Lestrade, I know you said you would need to speak to your team to sort out whatever it is you need to with regard to Frankie's friends, but once you're able to, _please_ join the party. We would be so glad if you would."

"I don't know – I have to file the report, and there's the rest of the paperwork…" Lestrade began.

"The paperwork can wait a little – please do join us," Lady Anna asked again with a grateful smile, just before she slipped back into the reception room.

"Gentlemen, we'd be happy if you would stay for the rest of the evening – you came dressed to blend in in case a guest spotted you somewhere about the house, so why not pop into the next room? Have a couple of drinks, _at the very least_!" Carstairs sincerely seconded his wife's invitation. "Our evening parties always go on until about one in the morning!"

"I'll come right back after I've spoken to my sergeant," Lestrade agreed, slipping out of the side door of the rear vestibule. It was the small door leading to a private corridor of the mansion that they had used to enter this space to observe everyone through the two-way mirror. In this vestibule, the mirror was normally hidden behind a sort of arras (how very Hamlet-ish, and how very unsurprising, considering that the house belonged to Lord Somers, although his daughter and her husband were the primary occupants); but on the other side, it was ornately framed so that when one was in the reception room, it appeared to be a large, ordinary looking glass fitted to the wall.

"We might as well," John remarked. "Since we're here."

"You go ahead. Lestrade will join you when he's back upstairs," Sherlock told John. "Mr Carstairs, I'll wait in here a while more, if you don't mind – I'd like to make certain there's nothing else I've missed."

"You _don't_ miss things…" John began, eyeing Sherlock curiously.

But at the same time, Carstairs was saying: "Take all the time you need, Sherlock. Come on, Dr Watson – let's leave him to himself for a bit – Anna says that when Sherlock was a child, he was always looking for a quiet corner where he could be left alone…"

Their host steered John out of the vestibule, leaving Sherlock in the small room.

Sherlock had missed nothing, of course. But he had no interest in joining the party. However, if he declared right away that he was leaving, John and Lestrade might leave with him – and probably drag him along with them to the Yard for paperwork or, worse, into a pub. So he would linger in the house for a while before slipping away. Just a while, in this opulently decorated "secret room" with its chinoiserie silk wall panels and a Chinese woven silk carpet custom-made to fit the floor space.

As he gazed through the two-way mirror at the party in full swing with John being introduced to some of the guests, he felt as if he was observing an entirely separate world on the other side of the looking glass. Even though his best friend was there, and the body language of some of the Carstairs' other guests was not uninteresting, it left him cold. He didn't want to be here now the case was over. He wanted to be snuggling up with Mycroft, running his hands over his body, drawing the scent of his hair, his skin and his sweet breath into his lungs.

He longed to be busy seducing his brother.

Honestly, no one would believe Mycroft was supposedly the much more sexually experienced one. It just seemed that he was having difficulty getting past the fact that he had never allowed himself to desire Sherlock carnally until now.

Sherlock knew that if he pressed the matter – if he gave Mycroft even the smallest hint that he felt sad about being physically held at arm's length, or if he manipulated him emotionally – then Mycroft would give in to him. He always gave in to Sherlock whenever he was convinced that his little brother was genuinely miserable. Sherlock had shamelessly milked this before, ruthlessly obtaining goods and resources and leverage from Mycroft for his own ends, but he didn't want to do that now. Yes, it might mean that Mycroft would follow his lead and let him explore the sexual dimension of their relationship much more deeply at once. But it would also mean that he would lose the chance to see what steps Mycroft would craft on his own to meet Sherlock in the middle instead of just going along with Sherlock's choreography. He didn't want to miss out on the beauty of Mycroft getting to that point on his own and being truly ready to dance this dance with him.

The side door of the rear vestibule opened, and as Sherlock's back was to it, he thought for a half-second that it was Lestrade returning to the room. But instantly, he saw from the faint reflection of the tall, lean, white-haired figure in the glass that it wasn't Lestrade – in any case, the person's step, the way he handled the door, and the subtle scent of him added up to someone who was positively _not_ the detective inspector. Besides, before he could turn around, he saw through the mirror that Lestrade was just entering the reception room and being welcomed by Lady Anna.

The person here in the rear vestibule with Sherlock was Lord Somers.

"Well, my dear boy, it looks like you've pulled it off again," the earl said, shutting the door behind him. "You've saved my daughter and her husband from being embarrassed by thieves making off with their guests' valuables at their party, so you have my gratitude."

Sherlock gave him a brisk smile and said: "It was no trouble at all. Good evening, Lord Somers – I was just leaving."

He had hardly made a twitch towards the side door before the man said cheerfully: "Oh, come on, Sherlock – where's the fire? Stay a while."

When he'd been at Mycroft's yesterday, their conversation had meandered onto the topic of Lord Somers, and Mycroft had remarked that he hadn't spoken to him yet about how he'd put them on the spot at the charity ball.

"It hasn't exactly been a priority these three days," Mycroft had smiled, giving Sherlock a feeling of warmth as he understood that _he_ was a priority for his brother. "And looking him up to warn him never to do it again will only give him an inflated sense of how much of an impact his mischief can make on others."

"You're not going to let him off, are you, Brother mine, ye of scary-warehouse-interrogation infamy?" Sherlock had huffed.

"Not at all. I'll wait to run into him somewhere, or for him to come to me, so that I don't appear anxious to meet with him. Although he's officially retired, he's heavily involved in various community outreach schemes linked to the Home Office, so I see him around. It's most annoying, by the way: He's always going on about 'Holmes this' and 'Holmes that' when we're in the same meetings, then, once he's with me alone or a few others he knows well, it becomes 'Mycroft my dear boy this' and 'Myc my dear boy that', and it grates on me so," he grumbled.

"And _you_ told me off for being rude to him!" Sherlock protested, pretending to bite Mycroft's shoulder in a pique.

"Well, I'm never _rude_ to him," Mycroft clarified, cupping Sherlock's face firmly to get his teeth off his flesh. "I never make it obvious how I feel about his eccentric habits – why give him the pleasure? So make sure _you're_ never blatantly rude to him again, do you hear?"

Mycroft had kissed him then, and Sherlock had had to grunt out a vague promise not to be overtly impolite to Lord Loony ("… _oh, all right, all right… I mean Lord Somers…"_) again.

So, in the rear vestibule now, Sherlock gritted his teeth and turned back to the two-way mirror to gaze needlessly at what was going on in the reception room. Lord Somers came up behind him and stood exactly where Sherlock couldn't easily see him without turning his head. It struck him as reminiscent of the night years ago that he and Mycroft had been in the morgue on the occasion of his having to identify a body that was supposed to have been the mortal remains of Irene Adler. He and Mycroft had still very much been in the mire of their difficult sibling relationship then – and yet, Sherlock realised with surprise now – he'd felt a certain interesting frisson between them that he hadn't put a name to in that moment when Mycroft had stepped up very close behind him to light his cigarette for him.

It gave him a sense of unease that Lord Somers was standing in a similar relative position to him at present.

"When I was younger, and tearing about with Rudy half the time, I was never certain if I was being a good-enough father to my children," the earl mused while observing his daughter through the glass as she circulated and made everyone feel at home with genuine warmth. "But they seem to have turned out well and to have raised their own children well, unlike some of my sister's offspring – and _their_ young ones in turn. Poor Frankie badly needed a firmer hand when he was growing up, but it wasn't my place to tell my niece and her husband how to raise their sprog. It's a pity they'll have to face their mistakes the hard way now."

Sherlock didn't reply, but continued to look out through their window into the reception room, counting the seconds before he could attempt to excuse himself again.

"Oh, I spoke to Mycroft today," Lord Somers remarked casually – a little too casually. "His speech was polite, as always, but his eyes threatened death."

"Indeed?" Sherlock asked, not looking at the earl, but allowing an amused note to colour that single word he uttered. He knew that threatening look of Mycroft's very well, and the killer smile it was usually paired with even better.

"He had the look about him of wanting to dispatch me using a poorly oiled guillotine with an unsharpened blade. Very flashy and Continental, that. I don't think he would even have been willing to offer me the traditional English indignity of the executioner's block."

"Hmm."

"You boys need a _much_ better sense of humour," Lord Somers sighed with dramatic flair. "You're such grouches, both of you."

"Our sense of humour is perfectly fine, thank you," Sherlock said shortly.

"Whatever objections you may have had to _my_ notion of humour, you must surely admit that the outcome was glorious," Lord Somers went on blithely.

Sherlock wasn't 100 percent certain what that latest statement implied. It probably alluded to a lot more than he wanted the earl to know about.

His silence didn't deter Lord Somers at all, for the old man continued: "You danced beautifully together. Even better than how I remembered when you were a child and Mycroft was coaching you. Rudy always looked so damn proud of you two."

"I do believe I'll be going now…"

"Oh, listen to that! Puccini, isn't it?"

The string quartet Lady Anna had engaged for her soiree had just begun a new set, starting with the distinctive notes that Sherlock immediately identified as Musetta's Waltz Song from _La Boheme_.

"Come, my dear boy – indulge me," Lord Somers said, holding a hand out to him.

"What?" Sherlock turned to stare at the man with what was surely a look of undisguised disbelief – evidently, Lord Loony had an evil plan to ensure that each time he made an appearance, Sherlock would be tossed deep down the bloody rabbit hole and plunged into a bizarre world where he could make sense of nothing.

"Rudy and I used to prance around all the time to all sorts of music, so indulge an old man now, won't you?"

"I _really_ doubt…"

"It would make me very happy," Lord Somers insisted. The arm attached to the left hand he held out to Sherlock wasn't wavering in the slightest.

Sherlock found himself gritting his teeth again, deciding he would do his _damnedest_ to be polite, and stepped uneasily into a peculiar waltz to this cheerful music with the earl leading him, right here on the Chinese carpet of the secret room. There was just about enough of an empty area for a restrained waltz in a smallish circle, and they adjusted their moves to fit the space.

He wasn't a bad dancer, Lord Loony – he moved his old limbs smoothly enough, and had undoubtedly spent a fair part of his youth gracing the ballrooms of grand households all over Britain and Europe (as well as the throbbing dance floors of London clubs in the 1960s).

"Rudy did delight in watching you two when you were younger – though he did also look thoughtful a lot of the time when doing so, and once, only one time, he said to me: 'Lenny, look at them – so _brilliant_, but I fear Mycroft will get his heart broken one day.'"

Sherlock almost froze at these words, but those long-ago hours of disciplined practice in Mycroft's arms kept his feet moving correctly now on autopilot as he stared hard at Lord Somers, trying to read his lined face and his ice-blue eyes.

"Did you do that, Sherlock my boy?" the man was asking now, piercing him with his gaze. "Did you break your brother's heart?"

"That is none of your business," Sherlock stated coldly.

"You did, didn't you?" Lord Somers asked. "He looked so sad at the charity ball when he had a chance to hold you in his arms again, And by now, he's given up that hope for so long that he doesn't really want you any more, does he?"

Sherlock did freeze this time. He came to a complete stop, unable to dance on, refusing to believe his ears but stricken by the fear that Loony Leonard was right – he'd left Mycroft out in the cold too long – he couldn't bring himself to really desire him any more – he was just looking for a means to push Sherlock away in this sense without pushing him away in every other sense…

"When Mycroft spoke to me today to give me his veiled warning never to put either of you on the spot in public again, I could see it, you know – he hasn't really touched you, has he?" Lord Somers remarked, his left hand still holding Sherlock's right, his right hand still on Sherlock's back even though their waltz had come to a halt. "I know you think I'm a batty old fool who's blind as the proverbial flying mammal, but I could see as much as Rudy could, in my own style. I'm not perceptive in the Holmes way, but my way sometimes sees more of the _feelings_ behind a mask than your way does."

Sherlock continued to stare in silence, but it was so hard – _so_ hard, amid all these churning emotions – to read that bloody unreadable old face inches from his…

"He doesn't want you any more in _that_ way, am I right?" Lord Somers continued. "I could see behind the mask of his face today how much he's holding back from moving ahead, even after the excellent chance I gave the two of you at the charity ball once I saw that you were at the event too. A pity for him – a real pity, as you're ever so beautiful despite being so prickly – you always were the loveliest child, and you've grown into such a beautiful man. Well, if he doesn't want you any more, perhaps you would like to consider someone else."

To Sherlock's astonishment, Lord Somers' right hand glided down his back and over his buttocks. And pinched. Lord Loony. The old family friend. The batty earl. Uncle Rudy's bisexual lover. A man Sherlock had known since his infancy. Was brazenly pinching his bottom.

"Remove your hands from me _now_," Sherlock ordered him coldly, trying to tug his right hand out of the earl's left, but finding it caught in a vise-like grip, those long, creased fingers tightening about him like Great-aunt Patricia's talons.

"Or what?" Lord Somers asked, narrowing his eyes and studying his face intently while his right hand remained where it shouldn't.

All this raced through Sherlock's mind in a split second: If he hit the earl, or shoved him away, he might kill or badly injure him – he was in his seventies, and his bones might not take a punch or a fall well, even if they were standing on a carpet. He was taller than Sherlock, and he could feel that his muscle strength was still fairly impressive, so it wouldn't be a case of Sherlock simply being able to shift a weedy, withered, offending twig of a hand away – no, he would have to grab his wrist or fingers and wrench his arm – but if he did that, he might break something too – for all he knew, the earl's bones were brittle by now – and despite his general rudeness to the man, Sherlock genuinely did not wish to cause him physical harm. Maybe Loony Leonard really had gone completely loony – maybe Lady Anna needed to check her father into a psychiatric hospital. And maybe he could just reach round and carefully pry…

The next moment, the matter was taken out of Sherlock's hands when the side door of the vestibule opened behind him, and a sudden rush of carpet-padded footsteps was swiftly followed by a familiar arm wrapping around his waist and drawing him firmly backwards away from Lord Somers as a voice he would know anywhere in the world hissed in the most _furious_ tones he had ever heard him employ: "Get your bloody hands off my brother! If you ever lay a _finger_ – no, if you ever come anywhere _near_ Sherlock again, I will make you rue the day you were born, and after I'm done with you, not a single molecule of you will remain anywhere on this earth for anyone to find, _do you understand_, Lord Somers?"

Mycroft.

His arm tightened protectively around Sherlock's waist, and it was about all Sherlock could do to gape at him, and then to gape some more as his brother turned worriedly to him and asked: "Are you all right?"

He saw it then – not only the love and concern and worry – but also the _fire_ in Mycroft's eyes. Hesitation was no longer commanding the pas de deux with hope-belief, but had left the scene, and _there_ was the blaze of desire he needed to see.

"Mycroft…" Sherlock murmured.

"At last!" Lord Somers huffed in amusement.

"_What?_" Mycroft and Sherlock snarled in unison, their heads snapping back towards the earl.

"_That's _the look I wanted to see," Lord Somers smiled. "The one that would tell me _you_ wouldn't get your heart broken any more, and _you_ wouldn't be doing any more breaking."

"What are you going on about, you dirty old codger?" Sherlock growled, and he knew that Mycroft certainly wouldn't tell him off for his rudeness this time.

"Ah, I'm happy to play the dirty old codger if it means Rudy'll be at ease from where he's watching," Lord Somers gave a dismissive wave of the very hand that had just been groping Sherlock's backside. "Thank you for your restraint in _not_ breaking my old bones, by the way, Sherlock my boy."

"You…" Mycroft began in astonishment, the flush of anger still colouring his face high over his cheekbones.

"Good Lord, Mycroft Holmes, has your remarkable brain been put through your office shredder?" Lord Somers chuckled. "Would I have convinced you to come here with me after our meeting this evening by informing you that Sherlock was in this very house solving a case with DI Lestrade if I'd really wanted my wicked way with him? And would I have asked my son-in-law to give me 15 minutes alone in this vestibule with Sherlock before he was to go to you in the gallery and tell you precisely which room you could find us in, if I'd _truly _wanted to molest your delectable little brother? And why do you think I went to see you today in the first place, of all days? It was because Anna rang me early this morning to tell me about Frankie's scheme, and mentioned that Sherlock would be helping out, right here, this evening. And at our little meeting today, when I took a look at your face the moment I probed you about your brother, I knew you were head over heels and happy, but still holding back. I had to seize this opportunity, didn't I? Just as I was opportunistic at the charity ball, I had to be opportunistic today too. Goodness, I'm disappointed in that mighty mind of yours if fear and love and jealousy are all it takes to shut down the logical thought process. Oh, well, I believe my daughter's been expecting me to join the party for a while now, so I'll be in the next room if you want me."

With that, Lord Somers left with a ridiculously jaunty step for someone who'd just been molesting the world's only consulting detective, and closed the side door after him. Within a minute, Mycroft and Sherlock could see him through the two-way looking glass walking into the reception room and giving his daughter a warm hug.

"Mycroft," Sherlock murmured again, not quite knowing what else to say, but so relieved to inhale the gorgeous scent of his skin that all he could do was hold him, and hold him tightly.

With a soft huff of mock-exasperation, Mycroft said softly: "All I had to do was take my eyes off you for one evening – _one single _evening – and what happened? I walked in on you in a secret room, _flirting _with a man older than Daddy."

Sherlock snorted.

"Oh, you think it's funny?" Mycroft glared at him. "I can assure you that nothing at all was funny about opening that door and seeing Lord Somers' hands all over your bottom!"

"It was only one hand," Sherlock pointed out, trying not to grin. "And his pinches were bloody sharp. I've changed my mind about his possibly being frail – no one with brittle bones could pinch _that_ hard – my bottom's sore."

Mycroft emitted an indignant growl, grabbed Sherlock's hand, and led him out of the room into the private corridor, away from the looking glass that had been a window into another world whose strictures neither of them wanted to be ruled by any more, away from the secret rear vestibule, and down to the foyer where he let go of his hand but transferred his touch to the small of Sherlock's back instead – a fairly innocent spot for a brother but a fairly proprietorial one for a lover – and steered him out the front door straight into his black Jaguar waiting by the pavement.

In the back seat, with the privacy screen up and the car on the move, the heated kiss Mycroft gave him was exactly what he needed, as was the low, gravelly declaration: "I'm never letting you out of my sight again."

"Not that _that's_ anything too new," Sherlock whispered cheekily.

"That's it – I'm installing cameras in every room of 221B Baker Street and every corner of New Scotland Yard and St. Bart's, even the broom closets where you sometimes like to imagine you can hide for a quick smoke without being caught," Mycroft threatened, pinching Sherlock's cheek firmly.

Sherlock melted all over again at the reminder that no one touched him like his brother did – even his pinches were just right. Laughing softly, he replied: "I think John, Lestrade and Molly might raise an objection or two to having the wicked queen's all-seeing magic mirrors planted throughout their domains."

"So I'm the wicked queen with the magic mirrors now, am I?" Mycroft queried, eyebrows raised in what should have been a stern expression, but looked only like love and playfulness to Sherlock. "I hope you're not going to further mix up all these fairy tales and tell me that Lord Somers is our fairy godfather?"

"A loony, molesting fairy godfather? That's a _terrible_ picture!" Sherlock groaned.

"Well, the label of 'fairy' was almost certainly what would have crossed the minds of staid folk years and years ago if they'd seen all the cross-dressing he did to keep Uncle Rudy company, and all the feather boas and sequinned stoles they flounced around in."

"Oh my God, so he really is our _fairy_ godfather after all," Sherlock giggled, and they kissed again.

When they reached the town house, and his brother ushered him in without waiting for Mr Rat Coachman to open the car door, Sherlock could see that the burgeoning glow of belief in Mycroft's eyes was already sitting down to a fevered tea party with lust and love, hesitation having departed quite a while ago.

"Are you going to teach me how to _tango_ properly at last?" Sherlock chuckled as Mycroft dragged him upstairs towards his bedroom, laying a thick serving of cheese on at the tea-party table.

"It _is_ about time, isn't it?" Mycroft agreed, accepting the cheese, interlacing their fingers and pulling Sherlock close as they stumbled up the last of the stairs.

A slow undressing by the light of the bedside lamp, exposing fascinating new territories of skin to lay claim to; lips, tongues and fingers landing and entering places they had once thought they would never obtain permission to approach. Once again, they knew not who was leading and who was following, but that was all right now – they were taking turns to set the pace, invite a response, ask the other to try a new step, take a risk. Sherlock led with enthusiasm; Mycroft led with finesse.

When they danced, they rarely needed spoken words to communicate, and Sherlock thrilled to the discovery that when they made love, they understood each other's body language just as well. If they uttered words, these were embellishments of their pleasure in each other. _"You're beautiful… Look who's talking… I was afraid you wouldn't want me after waiting so long… I would never not want you… But you ran away from me when I was younger… You were a child… I'm not a child any more… No, you're not… How did I ever think you were anything other than perfect…?"_

When they weren't uttering words, Sherlock could interpret every caress, kiss and squeeze that Mycroft gave him in bed, every glide of skin against skin, every shift in position, just as he had been able to read his subtlest moves on the dance floor.

_You feel incredible. You taste perfect. Touch me back, yes, just like that. I want to lay claim to every inch of you. I want you to always remember that no one else is allowed to touch you this way. Shift up a bit. Slow down… pace yourself… we have all night. Slower. Speed up a bit. Come up here, let me look at you. Mmmm… spread your legs for me now… yes, that's it… _

They went through no uncertainty, no fumbling, no one-sidedness as there so often was with new lovers, and none of either the coldness or wildness that came with one-night stands fuelled by lust or intoxicating substances. This, Sherlock understood, was what it was like to make love sober to an equal who respected you as much as you respected him (despite his previous barb about your _never_ respecting him, which was fine – it added texture to their interactions). He knew when Mycroft wanted to be in control, when he wanted to yield control, and when he wanted them both to steer. He could read through his touch when he wished them to explore in leisurely fashion and when he wanted them to get to the point. He knew what Mycroft needed from his mouth, how deep to take him, how he needed to tangle his fingers in Sherlock's hair – and even when he tightened his grip, he did it just right so the pain in his scalp was pleasurable. He knew when it was time to use the lubricant, when Mycroft was ready for him to push his fingers inside him. He understood the trust Mycroft was putting in him, and he read his moans, every throaty sound he made, every cry that escaped him. He took him slowly and sweetly, and laid claim to him just as he had taken possession of every part of Sherlock's skin. Then they switched. They didn't _have_ to do everything in one night, but they _wanted_ to. It meant something – it was symbolic. After all the rehearsals, the choreography of the opening night of the dance would be incomplete without it. It was a ritual, in a way, a ceremony of a kind, as significant as the consummation of a wedding.

And so, Sherlock wrapped his arms around him as he climaxed with Mycroft inside him, coming together, their bodies and the bedsheet covered with a mess of sticky fluids – and it was _glorious_. They held each other, panting hard, heedless of the mess, revelling in the organised disorder they had made of their no-holds-barred tango which Sherlock had finally begun to learn in full from Mycroft. It was beautiful and physical and filthy and perfect, an utterly raw and hedonistic end to a tea party in a Wonderland that had none of the innocence of the March Hare's, but all of the well-planned chaos of a Holmesian bacchanalia.

They drew apart, only in order to drag each other off to the bathroom and examine their freshly conquered territories all over again under the shower.

"Sherlock…" Mycroft murmured against his neck, moving carefully because every surface around them was slick with water and soap, and this was not the time to take a tumble, not when they were already so far down the rabbit hole.

"Mm, I know," Sherlock responded to the unspoken words, smiling as he purred back into Mycroft's ear. "I know no one's getting anything up any time soon after the two rounds we went in bed, but I just want to touch you…"

"That feels good – do that again."

"This?" he asked, running his hands in slow circles over the small of Mycroft's back and down to that delectable, workout-firmed bottom.

"Mmm, _yes_."

"Tomorrow, when we're up and ready for another round, show me that move again – you know, _that_ one, when you took me."

"Oh, that one? Didn't you memorise it the first time?"

"You must be joking – I was too preoccupied with moaning your name," he chuckled, lacing his voice with a touch of low-pitched dirtiness that he was starting to realise turned Mycroft on quite a bit.

"_Really?_" Mycroft teased, pausing in the nibbling of his neck. "And here I was thinking you were always such a good student that I only ever needed to show you any move _once_ for you to pick it up."

"If you think you're going to get away with showing me _any_ of your bedroom tango moves only _once_, Mycroft, you must be hallucinating."

"What do you expect, Sherlock? Aren't we still on the hallucination-filled side of the looking glass?"

"But it's not the _wrong_ side of the looking glass, by any means."

"Not at all. It's our own Wonderland, and we make the rules."

Another loving but hungry kiss under the falling water, and Sherlock knew deep in his bones that here in his embrace was the one who had always been _the right partner_ for him in every sense even in the years when he had been blind to the truth and waging war against him. Mycroft would always be the _perfect_ partner for him. More incredibly, he saw for the first time that this loving, wonderful other half of his had miraculously also decided that Sherlock, with all his flaws and shortcomings, was now _his_ own perfect partner too. The cold war was long over, the chase was at an end, but their dance would go on, and he knew they would never tire of it.

-END-

* * *

**Note:** It's done. Their dance may be going on, but my report on it ends here :) I'm sorry that the last chapter took me so long to put up, but to those of you who were willing to wait for it, thank you for waiting! And I also want to thank all of you so very much for all the encouragement and kind comments you gave after the first two chapters – you're all such wonderful people :)

A note about the time frame of this story: I've left it up to the reader to decide whether this is post- or pre-_The Final Problem_. I haven't made any mention of Eurus, Mary or Rosie, but there's also nothing here that would negate the possibility of their having already entered (or, in Mary's case, departed from) the lives of Sherlock, Mycroft and John. What is for certain is that this fanfic has to be post-_His Last Vow/The Abominable Bride_, because it contains references to Magnussen and the resulting near-exile for Sherlock; also, Anderson's mention of having been _invited_ by Greg to the charity event indicates that he's no longer employed by New Scotland Yard.

So you can choose to imagine that Mary and Rosie are at home while "the boys" go out for the evening, or Mrs Hudson is babysitting; or Sherlock and John have yet to learn of Eurus' existence, or they all emerged and healed from the Sherrinford nightmare some time ago; or that this is perhaps a universe in which Eurus doesn't exist. It's up to you.


End file.
